Connecting Stata to the rest of the world via SWire: Several applications including SWordy, an Office add-in to facilitate interaction between Microsoft Word and Stata

SWire is a plugin that connects Stata to other software programs, thus permitting the interaction between Stata and other client applications. Software programs relying on SWire can exchange data with Stata or request that Stata execute basic data management operations. Client applications can be developed in many programming languages, and even web pages can communicate with Stata via Swire. The only requirement is that client applications communicate with Stata via the SWire protocol, which is based on HTTP. Software programs like R, QGis, and Office applications can be extended to interact with Stata. Several software programs have been developed to demonstrate how SWire can be usefully employed for connecting Stata to other software programs. One of these is the new SWordy add-in for Microsoft Word, which will be presented here. It allows for the retrieval of data from Stata to Word and the creation of automatic reports, namely, Word documents with numerical data and tables that can be automatically obtained from Stata. Automatic reports are useful for saving time when presenting results in addition to providing a way for documenting the final part of data analysis workflow.