Automatically import/export things as Data Frames in Python service

[tpetricek]

Using the cleanEHR data set, after running the R data loading script and passing dt to Python, it seems that dt is not automatically turned into a Pandas data frame. Do we want this to happen? I think so, because it will make things easier...

For example, if we want to get a list of headers, we have to run:

xx = pd.DataFrame(list(pd.DataFrame(dt)))

Ideally, we would just write:

xx = list(dt)

And the Python service would automatically convert dt into Pandas data frame when importing it from the data store and also turn xx into a data frame before exporting it. If we write just:

xx = list(pd.DataFrame(dt))

Then the Python service gives us back a data frame, but with some really strange content...

[tpetricek]

The automatic conversion on import seems to be working fine in our sample, but not in cleanEHR.... (no idea why!)