topic Re: Time field as a measure in SAS Visual Analytics

Time field as a measure

bakara — Thu, 07 Jun 2018 08:07:53 GMT

I have Sas va 7.4
When I import a database, it defaults placing the time field as a category and not as a metric. How do I change this while maintainin

my hourly format?

An example of what I am trying to produce:

Thank you.

Re: Time field as a measure

pau13rown — Sat, 09 Jun 2018 02:53:11 GMT

what makes you say sas is treating it as a categorical variable? does it appear as a character variable? is sas throwing an error when you use eg proc univariate?

Re: Time field as a measure

SASKiwi — Sat, 09 Jun 2018 22:10:45 GMT

Check your data source. Is the time field defined as character? That would explain why VA is treating it as a category.

How are you importing from the database and what is the database? The best solution is to get the import working correctly so the time field is defined as a numeric with a SAS time format.

Re: Time field as a measure

bakara — Sun, 10 Jun 2018 11:10:28 GMT

Hi,

My import process is pretty simple. I created an example for you to see. I created 2 columns database with "Enter" column that is defined as time (you can see in the picture). Next, I export it to LocalData Folder as SAS file (sas7bdat). Then, i imported it to VA.

VA sees it as an hour as it should but im unable to change is to measure.

Please see attached pictures.

Re: Time field as a measure

SASKiwi — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 00:23:05 GMT

OK, it appears date and time fields are treated as type category and you can't change this. However you can derive measures from these as explained in this post:

https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Visual-Analytics/Summarizing-time-columns-in-the-VA/m-p/302151/highlight/true#M5512

Re: Time field as a measure

bakara — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 12:41:34 GMT

Hi,

i copied the solution from the post you gave me (I took from the last replay)

IF ( Sum [_ByGroup_] ('timeSec'n) <= 3600 )

RETURN ( Floor(( Sum [_ByGroup_] ('timeSec'n) / 60 )) + ( ( Sum [_ByGroup_] ('timeSec'n) Mod 60 ) / 100 ) )

ELSE ( ( Floor(( Sum [_ByGroup_] ('timeSec'n) / 60 )) + ( ( Sum [_ByGroup_] ('timeSec'n) Mod 60 ) / 100 ) ) / 60 )

This solution isn't good enough because in some cases the minutes are over 60 as you can see in the picture bellow

Re: Time field as a measure

SASKiwi — Tue, 12 Jun 2018 08:08:46 GMT

What happens if you format the calculated measure as hours, minutes, seconds?

Re: Time field as a measure

bakara — Tue, 12 Jun 2018 08:26:29 GMT

It's going back to category.

No matter what I do, if I'm using time format in a calculation its going back to category.

I got an answer from SAS that it's impossible to use time (in time format) as a measure in VA 7.4

8.2 Version is more flexible and it can be done. Bottom line, I need to upgrade my VA.

Re: Time field as a measure

SASKiwi — Tue, 12 Jun 2018 20:22:53 GMT

Luckily we don't use times on our VA 7.4, and good to hear 8.2 (and soon 8.3) deals with times better.