Dear fellow LimeSurvey users and administrators,

I got the following question: Is it possible to directly access survey results via SQL-Database table import function in Excel?

And similarly but connected, can numerous results from different surveys (which are identical, but rolled out to different groups over time), be saved in one comprehensive database table?`The objective is to build up a single database fed by survey results over time.

Thank you very much for your support!

Sincerely,
Steffen Runge
- University of Cologne -

Directly access to the SQL database would be a security issue as far I know, however, limesurvey has an API for this kind of stuffs, not sure if you can do anything with it in excel but you can reach it with python, php, R etc. You can read more here: www.limesurvey.org/manual/RemoteControl_2_API

Every survey in LS creates it's own table, I dot not know if it is possible to have separate surveys but in the same database. But, with the API you could just build this comprehensive database table yourself.

Hi,

you can do that.
There is a data table for each survey called [chosen prefix]_survey_[surveyID], e.g. "lime_survey_123456"
And with "phpMyAdmin" or another database tool you can export this table to several formats, also EXCEL.

And with some SQL statements you can join your tables into one.
Like:
CREATE TABLE newtable AS SELECT * FROM table1;

INSERT INTO newtable
SELECT * FROM table1
UNION
SELECT * FROM table2
UNION ...

So you are free to use all SQL features.

But remember:
Do this you will get the column headers in the SGQA terminology and not your Question codes.
See this topic www.limesurvey.org/de/foren/development/...-qcode-database-view

Best regards
Joffm