TidyDensity
A distribution catalogue that grows by one family at a time, and rarely breaks anything.
Comparison · Analytics
mev vs soilDB
A side-by-side editorial comparison of mev and soilDB — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
mev vs soilDB: at a glance
What is mev?
An extreme-value toolkit reorganised its whole API into prefixed families and tripled its estimator count.
mev provides likelihood-based inference for univariate and multivariate extreme value models — threshold selection, shape estimation, tail dependence and max-stable simulation. Version 2.0 was a deliberate reorganisation: every threshold-selection routine now carries a thselect. prefix, every stability plot a tstab. prefix, and every extremal-dependence measure an xdep. prefix, with the old names deprecated but mostly still working. The same release added a large batch of estimators — Stein-weighted GPD, roughly a dozen shape estimators, second-order regular variation, L-moment GPD and Weissman quantiles.
What is soilDB?
The R front door to USDA soil data finishes a long deprecation cleanup and turns local-first.
soilDB is the R access layer for USDA-NRCS soil data: NASIS local databases, Soil Data Access, SoilWeb coverage services, and a widening set of curated national grids. The 2.9.x line closed out a multi-release deprecation cycle — column aliases and stringsAsFactors are gone, R 4.1 is the floor, and the bundled sample profile collections were rebuilt against the new schema. Recent work has shifted from adding query functions to making existing ones faster and usable against local SQLite or GeoPackage copies.
mev vs soilDB: editorial side-by-side
mev
0.0ANALYTICS
An extreme-value toolkit reorganised its whole API into prefixed families and tripled its estimator count.
◆ Current state
mev provides likelihood-based inference for univariate and multivariate extreme value models — threshold selection, shape estimation, tail dependence and max-stable simulation. Version 2.0 was a deliberate reorganisation: every threshold-selection routine now carries a thselect. prefix, every stability plot a tstab. prefix, and every extremal-dependence measure an xdep. prefix, with the old names deprecated but mostly still working. The same release added a large batch of estimators — Stein-weighted GPD, roughly a dozen shape estimators, second-order regular variation, L-moment GPD and Weissman quantiles.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is consolidating into a reference implementation of the extreme-value literature rather than a collection of one-off routines. Sixteen threshold-selection methods now share standardised arguments and their own plot and print methods with automatic selection, which is the tell: the goal is comparability across methods, not just availability. Dependency reduction runs alongside, with distribution functions written in-package to drop evd and Rsolnp replacing nloptr in earlier releases.
◆ Prediction
Version 2.1 continued adding threshold-selection routines within the new naming scheme, so the next release most likely follows the same pattern — more estimators fitted to the established prefixes, plus fixes to the 2.0 renaming. The entries give no sign of a further structural change.
soilDB
0.0ANALYTICS
The R front door to USDA soil data finishes a long deprecation cleanup and turns local-first.
◆ Current state
soilDB is the R access layer for USDA-NRCS soil data: NASIS local databases, Soil Data Access, SoilWeb coverage services, and a widening set of curated national grids. The 2.9.x line closed out a multi-release deprecation cycle — column aliases and stringsAsFactors are gone, R 4.1 is the floor, and the bundled sample profile collections were rebuilt against the new schema. Recent work has shifted from adding query functions to making existing ones faster and usable against local SQLite or GeoPackage copies.
◆ Where it's heading
The arc points at offline and local-first workflows. downloadSSURGO() and createSSURGO() keep gaining arguments for building and querying local SSURGO databases, and the query internals were rewritten as common table expressions so identical code runs against the remote service or a local file. Coverage is widening in parallel: FY26 SoilWeb maps now reach most OCONUS surveys, while fetchHWSD() and fetchSOLUS() pull in datasets outside the core NASIS/SSURGO pair. Federal URL churn — EDIT, SoilWeb, S3-hosted geometry — is a recurring maintenance tax the package absorbs on users' behalf.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next releases to keep extending parallel and offline SSURGO handling, since LAPPLY.FUN has just opened the door to arbitrary parallel backends, and to fold more curated SoilWeb and FAO datasets behind fetch* wrappers.
Alternatives to mev and soilDB
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 mev or soilDB.
cfbfastr
College football's open data client hit v2 — and now reports how many API calls you have left.
rnpn
The USA phenology data client rebuilt its entire stack and stopped handing users -9999 as a number.
GeneNMF
GeneNMF rebuilt how it derives meta-programs, changing every result it had produced.
rempsyc
Publication-ready psychology tables and plots, tracking APA style as closely as the software allows.
sdsfun
A spatial-statistics utility package exists to be depended on, and is built accordingly.
Recent activity from mev and soilDB
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agosoilDBFY26 soil maps reach OCONUS; SSURGO downloads go parallel
- 4mo agosoilDBROSETTA v2 lands as the deprecated NASIS aliases are removed ⚡
- 9mo agomevTwo more threshold-selection routines slot into the new scheme
- 9mo agomevThreshold, stability and dependence functions regrouped under prefixes ⚡
- 10mo agosoilDBNASIS record IDs now retrievable through Soil Data Access
- 11mo agosoilDBSpatial queries can pull columns from non-spatial tables
- 1y agosoilDBNASIS 7.4.3 metadata, plus HWSD and a local cache in 2.8.10
- 1y agosoilDBQuery internals rewritten as CTEs for local SQLite support
- 2y agomevBoundary-case likelihood fixes, bundled with the prior release's notes
- 3y agomevGEV and GP distribution functions brought in-house to drop evd
- 4y agomevFour max-stable families, fixed parameters and threshold diagnostics
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between mev and soilDB?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. mev and soilDB 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 mev better than soilDB?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. mev and soilDB 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 mev?
Top mev alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "mev alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/mev for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to soilDB?
Top soilDB alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "soilDB alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/soildb for the full list with editorial commentary on each.