topic How to export feature importance from PROC LIGHTGRADBOOST (LightGBM) in SAS Viya? [Stable 2025.06] in SAS Data Science

How to export feature importance from PROC LIGHTGRADBOOST (LightGBM) in SAS Viya? [Stable 2025.06]

Zaid_Sanchez — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 15:16:15 GMT

Hi everyone,
With PROC GRADBOOST I can obtain variable importance via an ODS table, but I can’t find the equivalent for LightGBM using PROC LIGHTGRADBOOST.

Questions:

Does PROC LIGHTGRADBOOST expose any ODS table (e.g., VariableImportance / FeatureImportance) to extract feature importance?
Is there an option to save or export it to a CAS/SAS table (e.g., OUTIMPORTANCE, STORE/OUTMODEL, TRAININFO, or similar)?
If not, is there a recommended approach via PROC CAS actions or reading the astore/model to retrieve feature importance?

Environment: SAS Viya — Version: Stable 2025.06 (running in CAS).

Thanks in advance! Any pointers to documentation, exact ODS table names, or example workflows would be greatly appreciated.

Re: How to export feature importance from PROC LIGHTGRADBOOST (LightGBM) in SAS Viya? [Stable 2025.0

sbxkoenk — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 22:15:10 GMT

SAS® Viya® Platform Programming Documentation