How Do You Want to Use WRDS?

Quick Intro to WRDS | Spanish

Top of Section

Use Our Web Query Forms

All you need is a web browser and Internet access to query data from WRDS. No software to install, no specific programming language to learn. After you've decided on which dataset to use, you can use our web-based query form to extract and output data in the format of your choice.

• Simple, powerful queries with a few clicks.
• Export into the format of your choice.
• Import into popular programs with ease.

Each dataset on WRDS includes a description of what's included as well as links to the pages for each query. The web-based version of WRDS is designed to work with any modern browser.

Our web queries have the same general format for all databases in WRDS. When you submit your query, it runs on our powerful servers and is made available for you to download when it is complete.

Full documentation: Web Queries or Introduction to Web Queries

Use SAS Studio
Access WRDS data from any web browser using SAS Studio. SAS Studio is a web-based version of SAS, that combines the ease of a point-and-click web interface with the power of the underlying SAS language and data files. WRDS provides data in SAS format, allowing native querying of WRDS data right within your SAS programs.

Full documentation: SAS Studio Direct link: SAS Studio (upenn.edu)

Use RStudio Server
With a minimal amount of setup, WRDS provides a direct interface for R access, allowing native querying of WRDS data right within your R program. All WRDS data is stored in a PostgreSQL database, and is available through R via a native R Postgres driver.

Full documentation: RStudio Server Direct link: https://wrds-rstudio.wharton.upenn.edu/

Use Jupyter Notebooks
Access WRDS data in Jupyter notebooks using our WRDS Python module. Use Jupyter to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations, and narrative text.

Full documentation: JupyterHub Direct link: WRDS JupyterHub

Top of Section

WRDS provides a high-performance computing cluster, the WRDS Cloud. WRDS Cloud provides command-line access to a powerful research computing platform. It enables access to all of our data and includes support for many programming languages. Some of the benefits of the WRDS Cloud include:

• Run your own customized programs with several data sources at once.
• Use our powerful servers, offering up to 24 cores and 256GB RAM each.
• Store up to 10GB of your programs and data in your own directory.
• Access up to 500GB of temporary disk space to process programs and store results.

The WRDS Cloud is accessible via SSH, a way of securely connecting to WRDS. Once connected, you'll be able to access WRDS data directly in your favorite programming languages. Languages supported on the WRDS Cloud:

• SAS
• Python
• R
• Stata (requires active Stata license with StataCorp)
• MATLAB (requires active license with MathWorks)

Some knowledge of Linux is helpful when working on the WRDS Cloud, but we've included everything you need to get started in our documentation.

Full documentation: The WRDS Cloud

Top of Section

WRDS data is further accessible remotely from the comfort of your workstation or laptop, through many popular programming applications.

You can connect to WRDS and access WRDS datasets using the following options:

• SAS via PC-SAS/Connect
• R via R Console or RStudio IDE Download
• MATLAB
• Stata
• Local language installations such as Python
• WRDS provides ​ODBC and JDBC interfaces, so any application that can use ODBC/JDBC can retrieve data from WRDS.

These methods allow you to connect to the WRDS data on our PostgreSQL database cluster via ODBC, or our SAS data on disk. Each solution requires a small amount of initial setup, but once connected allows straightforward access from within your preferred programming environment.

Full documentation: Programming at WRDS

Top of Section