TSX and TSE: A proposal for an extended time series data interchange and transfer format

Abstract

This paper addresses the need for an efficient standard data exchange and transfer format for economic and social time series data that provides not only numeric observations but also sufficient documentation for users to be able easily to understand their properties. The paper proposes that the goal in the development of such a standard should be to permit these data to be downloaded into a user’s environment in such a way as to be immediately usable without the need for local editing. It is argued that to achieve this goal will require that data producers and distributors, as well as developers of econometric and statistical software packages, honor and support such a standard. A candidate standard is identified, the TSD format, originally developed in 1984 and used since by a number of organizations and econometric software packages. However, the argument is made that to support future needs in the modern Internet-based world it will be necessary to extend this format, in the process developing evolving data exchange protocols for both downloaded byte stream data, based upon XML, and file transfers, based upon some extension of the TSD format.