topic Re: Maximum number of columns in Visual Analytics List Table in SAS Visual Analytics

Maximum number of columns in Visual Analytics List Table

smm662002 — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 12:10:30 GMT

Hello,

SAS VIYA 3.5

SAS Visual Analytics 8.5

Would anyone know what is the maximum number of columns we can display in "List Table" object?

I know that we can override the system data limit of 40,000 records but is anything similar available for columns?

It would be very useful if anyone can provide a link to the SAS documentation where the maximum number of columns is specified.

Thank you,

smm662002

Re: Maximum number of columns in Visual Analytics List Table

Sam_SAS — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 15:03:55 GMT

Hello,

As I understand it, Viya does not limit the number of columns in a table. (Confirmed with dev team that there is no limit for VA)

I am asking the dev team about limits on the number of columns assigned to a report object in VA. It is certainly very impractical to display more than 20-30 columns in a list table (just in terms of the human viewer being able to scroll through them and process the information), but I don't know just how many you are allowed to assign.

Sam

Re: Maximum number of columns in Visual Analytics List Table

smm662002 — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 15:57:50 GMT

Hi Sam,

Thank you for your answer.
While I understand that it is impractical to display more then 20-30, if the customer would like to see 100 columns but Visual Analytics can only load 30 than maybe Visual Analytics List Table object is not the right tool for my problem and I will need to find an alternative solution.
I have done a test to see if any messages and I have received the following:
"Not all of the data appears because the client query row limit exceeds the server threshold".
The table had only 2000 records, so the message was created because of the limitations on the number of columns displayed.

Regards,
smm662002

Re: Maximum number of columns in Visual Analytics List Table

HunterT_SAS — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 16:12:00 GMT

This is a bit tricky. Visual Analytics has row limits and cell limits (which indirectly implies a column limit), but it does not have a hard column limit. You can adjust the cell limit to accommodate more columns if you would like. This SASNote provides a bit more detail about these limits and what properties may or may not matter for what you're trying to do:
https://support.sas.com/kb/62/148.html

This can get a bit complicated though and I would exercise caution here when making adjustments. The more rows you allow to be returned to the client, the more likely you are to encounter performance issues or service crashes or browser crashes.

If you do need to make adjustments here to allow for more rows or columns and run into trouble, I would suggest opening a tech support track.

Re: Maximum number of columns in Visual Analytics List Table

Sam_SAS — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 20:50:44 GMT

Depending on the data that you want to display, you might consider a crosstab object and putting the large number of columns on the vertical (rows) axis. This will make more sense if you have a large number of character (category) variables and not so many numeric (measure) variables. My reasoning here is that it is easier for users to scroll vertically than horizontally.

For what it is worth, I did a quick test on Viya 4 and was able to display 1000 columns in a list table. You will bump into the cell limit as Hunter mentioned.