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Comparison · Analytics
cairo vs omock
A side-by-side editorial comparison of cairo and omock — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
cairo vs omock: at a glance
What is cairo?
Cairo finally catches R's graphics engine, all the way to GE API 16.
Cairo is the R device that renders plots through the cairo library, and until 1.7-0 it lagged R's own graphics engine by several API generations. That release closes the gap to GE API 16 (R 4.5.0), adding fill patterns, masks and groups. The releases before it were maintenance: a segfault shim for grid, a bashism removal in configure, and Windows font and build fixes.
What is omock?
A mock-data generator for OMOP studies that keeps widening what it can fake.
omock builds synthetic OMOP Common Data Model tables so packages in the darwin-eu and OHDSI ecosystem can be tested without touching patient data. The 0.7.0 release adds concept set subsetting with its own vignette, unit and value support in mockMeasurement, observation date validation and cohort attrition initialization, while deprecating mockConcepts. Releases arrive as PR digests rather than written notes.
cairo vs omock: editorial side-by-side
cairo
0.0ANALYTICS
Cairo finally catches R's graphics engine, all the way to GE API 16.
◆ Current state
Cairo is the R device that renders plots through the cairo library, and until 1.7-0 it lagged R's own graphics engine by several API generations. That release closes the gap to GE API 16 (R 4.5.0), adding fill patterns, masks and groups. The releases before it were maintenance: a segfault shim for grid, a bashism removal in configure, and Windows font and build fixes.
◆ Where it's heading
The arc is catch-up, executed one API generation at a time. Glyph rendering arrived in 1.6-3, GE 15 stubs in 1.6-5 existed only to stop grid from segfaulting, and 1.7-0 delivers the real GE 13/14/16 feature set rather than placeholders. Alongside that, dropping the CAIROGD_VER C API and the mkdist step means the package now builds with plain R CMD build, which reads as deliberate reduction of maintenance overhead.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next releases to be corrective rather than additive: the entries show every API adoption here has been followed by a fix release, and patterns, masks and groups are a much larger surface than glyphs were.
omock
0.0ANALYTICS
A mock-data generator for OMOP studies that keeps widening what it can fake.
◆ Current state
omock builds synthetic OMOP Common Data Model tables so packages in the darwin-eu and OHDSI ecosystem can be tested without touching patient data. The 0.7.0 release adds concept set subsetting with its own vignette, unit and value support in mockMeasurement, observation date validation and cohort attrition initialization, while deprecating mockConcepts. Releases arrive as PR digests rather than written notes.
◆ Where it's heading
The package has been moving from generating tables to shipping and managing reference datasets — mockDatasets arrived in 0.4.0, mockCdmFromDataset gained a source argument in 0.5.0, and 0.6.1 added download retry handling plus an internal GiBleed dataset after the hosted files moved. The recent work is filling in CDM fidelity: type concepts, measurement units, attrition, and guards for degenerate cases like an empty person table.
◆ Prediction
Expect coverage to keep extending table by table toward the parts of the CDM that omock still cannot mock, with mockConcepts removed outright once the concept set subsetting path settles.
Alternatives to cairo and omock
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either cairo or omock.
geodist
geodist stays dependency-free and fast, and warns you when 'cheap' distances stop being honest.
errors
errors keeps making uncertainty print the way each scientific field expects.
CMAQ
CMAQ went global in v5.5, and has been patching that surface ever since.
enpls
enpls has not changed its statistics since 2016 — only its website, twice.
grex
grex is a lookup table with a version number — it ships when the annotation moves.
Recent activity from cairo and omock
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agoomockConcept set subsetting and richer measurement mocks
- 4mo agoomockDelphi dataset added and CDM version bumped
- 6mo agoomockDataset downloads survive the storage move
- 9mo agocairoCairo adds fill patterns, masks and groups (GE API 16) ⚡
- 11mo agoomockJOSS submission tag alongside the 0.5.0 release
- 11mo agoomockmockCdmFromDataset gains a source argument
- 11mo agocairoCairo 1.6-4: configure cleanup, locatorBell dropped on X11
- 11mo agocairoCairo 1.6-5 stubs GE 15 to stop grid segfaulting
- 1y agoomockmockDatasets introduces bundled reference data
- 2y agocairoCairo 1.6-2
- 2y agocairoCairo 1.6-3 adds glyph rendering for grid.glyph()
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between cairo and omock?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. cairo and omock are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is cairo better than omock?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. cairo and omock are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to cairo?
Top cairo alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "cairo alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/cairo-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to omock?
Top omock alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "omock alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/omock-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.