Survival Kit, software/Frequently asked questions

This page is supposed to answer the most frequently asked questions when using the Survival Kit.

General questions
Question: What is Survival Kit? Answer: Survival Kit is a set of Fortran programs designed to deal with large databases in survival analysis.

Question: How can I use it? Answer: For Survival Kit v3.12 you need to download the Fortran source code, compile it on your machine and run the executable file. Compilation is not necessary the v6.0, where the Windows source codes are supplied.

Question: What is a "compiler"? Answer: Compiler is a computer program which "translates" the source code (the text file) to an executable file which you can run on your computer (the .exe file on Windows). You could run programs - as for Fortran programs - compiled on the same operating system as yours. For example you can run the Survival Kit on your Windows machine compiled on an another Windows machine, but you can not run a version compiled under Linux (and vice versa). See for example Wikipedia for more technical description on compilers.

Question: Is this program for free? Answer: Yes. Survival Kit is an open source program (so you can look into the source code) that you can freely use to any purpose including national evaluations given that its usage is attributed. This could be done by a regular citation: ''Ducrocq, V., Sölkner, J. and Mészáros G. (2010). Survival Kit v6 – a Software Package for Survival Analysis. In: 9th World Cong. Genet. Appl. Livest. Prod., Leipzig, Germany.''

Questions on usage
Question: How to use the Survival Kit? Answer: You can read the small guide for beginner users right on this site. For more detailed instructions on specific keywords consult the manual.

Question: I want to try out the Survival Kit, but I don't have any data! Answer: There are several examples (some of them also with solutions) in the "Examples" folder after you download and unpack the program.

Question: I keep getting a "The value of the STATUS specifier in an OPEN statement does not match the file status (unit=15)." or a very similar error message! Answer: In this case you either don't have every file in the same directory as the executable file, or you have a typo in the file name.

Satisfied?
If you still haven't found the answer to your question you can contact me through my talk page here or email.