topic Re: How to show date from a data source in SAS VA 8.3 report? in SAS Visual Analytics

How to show date from a data source in SAS VA 8.3 report?

hilal1422 — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 13:29:17 GMT

Hi,

I have one table which stores last updated date as one of the column. ETL job for this table is defined in such a way that when users updates or inserts any record in that table, last updated date will be updated for all rows(means there will be only one value for all records). Client wants this date to be shown in report as data last updated date in report. I created 1 Parameter based on that column and put in Text object but when new data is loaded date is not getting reflected. Date value remains same as it was there in the table when I created report. I am using SAS VA 8.3 on SAS Viya(V.03.04) platform.

I know that I can add measures/ aggregated measures in text object but my date variable is in category list and I can't convert to measure not I can do any aggregation on it since it's in category list.

What I've tried with parameter looks like this but new values are not reflecting===>

Can someone guide me how to do this?

Re: How to show date from a data source in SAS VA 8.3 report?

jblack38 — Fri, 21 May 2021 15:31:43 GMT

I have the same issue. I have not found any articles that describe how to do this. It seems like SAS should allow you to display whatever data fields you want (categories or measures) in a Text object.
This seems to be a serious design flaw with SAS reports.

Re: How to show date from a data source in SAS VA 8.3 report?

johnfrytz — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 01:40:09 GMT

There is a refresh option, I encountered it before. It basically recalculate the object. Try the "automatically refresh object".
If not, look for the refresh option on the object which the parameter it sourced. Apologies, I forgot which test VA report I was able to the same thing.

Re: How to show date from a data source in SAS VA 8.3 report?

acordes — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 10:14:41 GMT

You can convert date stored as character into numeric (date) by using the PARSE operator under create new data item.
You must tell VA how to interpret the date format stored as string. Perhaps you need to combine with the substr operator or the datetime operator.
This should work for treating the date as numeric.
Independently of having the date as character or numeric you should be able to use it in a text object. Create a new data item using the concatenate function with the suffix and prefix for the last update date.
Use this item in text object.

Re: How to show date from a data source in SAS VA 8.3 report?

betmath — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 18:12:07 GMT

This is an old post, so maybe already solved. But here is another possible resolution for future people searching.

I also use a parameter to add a data refresh date to a text box. I load my data to CAS with a refresh date character column formatted how I want it to display in VA. Then, in VA I create a required user prompt based on this refresh date data item (only contains one unique value). I assume this is what hilal1422 did as well in the original post to get the date parameter, or something similar.

At first, I hid my required ("mock") user prompt on a hidden page in the report. I also set the user prompt to update every 1 seconds. When I did this I experienced the prompt and parameter combo not updating automatically when new data was pushed to CAS. I opened this support track (7613487958 - https://sirius.na.sas.com/Sirius/ShowTrack.aspx?trknum=7613487958).

I followed that advice of doubling up on the user prompt so that the "Initially select first item" checkbox would appear in the options. That may work long term and certainly seemed to work better, but I have still experienced times when the prompt parameter combo seemed to not update.

What I have sense done (thanks to a advice from a fellow VA user), and what I believe will work better and 100% of the time, is move the required user prompt to the same page as the text box parameter and hiding it in a precision container behind another object. I think this may be the key to solving my issue, and possibly the original issue of this ticket. Again, the user prompt the parameter is based on must be hidden on the SAME page as the text object the parameter is used in.