topic User-defined format works in Data Prep but not in Report Designer in SAS Visual Analytics

User-defined format works in Data Prep but not in Report Designer

BenG — Wed, 25 May 2016 02:45:06 GMT

Hello VA Community

I'm an OA dev and am trying to get a user-defined format working in VA, we're on v7.1.

My user-defined format displays the fiscal year of a date. In Australia a FY runs from 01JULyyyy to 30JUNyyyy and the current FY would be written as '2015/16'.

Creating the format in PROC FORMAT is pretty simple, the line for the current FY is:

'01JUL2015'd - '30JUN2016'd = '2015/16'

The corresponding contents of the compiled format are as you'd expect for those dates:

START  END    LABEL
20270  20635  2015/16

I've attached two screenshots. 'User-defined format works in Data Prep' shows it working perfectly.

'User-defined format breaks Report Designer' shows the error I receive in Report Designer when trying to drag FORMATTED_DATE onto the List Table control: 'The data source does not contain valid data'.

Notice the name of the user-defined format 'DJAG_FY' is displayed correctly in the properties of FORMATTED_DATE.

VA happens to be treating FORMATTED_DATE as a numeric rather than a date.

Does anyone have an idea what the root cause of this problem is?

Re: User-defined format works in Data Prep but not in Report Designer

BenG — Wed, 25 May 2016 04:22:02 GMT

I managed to get a copy of the SASVisualAnalyticsDesigner7.1.log

 [DESIGNER   ] ERROR [tomcat-http--44] 2016-05-25 11:22:05,731 [ST-25284-ja3y3Ks1WVXZpe21Hdts-cas:BenG] com.sas.bidata.result.lasr.LasrSummarizedQueryRunner - com.sas.lasr.LASRException: ERROR: Some formats could not be loaded in the LASR Analytic Server.
 [DESIGNER   ] ERROR [tomcat-http--44] 2016-05-25 11:22:05,766 [ST-25284-ja3y3Ks1WVXZpe21Hdts-cas:BenG] com.sas.bidata.error.DataErrorHandler - QueryFailed
com.sas.lasr.LASRException: ERROR: Some formats could not be loaded in the LASR Analytic Server.


 [DESIGNER   ] ERROR [tomcat-http--45] 2016-05-25 12:34:10,883 [ST-25815-Uc5arwdRTWkTEAKdUALf-cas:BenG] com.sas.bidata.result.lasr.LasrSummarizedQueryRunner - com.sas.lasr.LASRException: ERROR: Some formats could not be loaded in the LASR Analytic Server.
 [DESIGNER   ] ERROR [tomcat-http--35] 2016-05-25 12:34:10,983 [ST-25815-Uc5arwdRTWkTEAKdUALf-cas:BenG] com.sas.mobiledesigner.api.services.datasource.impl.DataSourceServiceImpl - QueryFailed 
com.sas.lasr.LASRException: ERROR: The user-defined programming statements could not be parsed.

The only matching page I found after searching was http://support.sas.com/kb/56/402.html

However that is referring to PICTURE formats and I am only trying to implement a plain 'value = label' format.

Seems like a bug...

Re: User-defined format works in Data Prep but not in Report Designer

TedStolarczyk — Wed, 25 May 2016 17:55:37 GMT

BenG:

I'm not in SAS Tech Support but I found this SASNOTE which may be related or completely unrelated to your situation.

That is, apostrophes in the custom format caused the same error messasge you received:

http://support.sas.com/kb/57/794.html

Maybe try removing the “/” symbol from the custom format and see if the Error message goes away in Designer.

Regardless, Error Messages should be called into SAS Tech Support so they can be officially logged and troubleshooted appropriately:

http://support.sas.com/techsup/contact/index.html

Especially if you have discovered a "bug".

Sincerely,

Ted Stolarczyk, SAS Customer Loyalty team

Re: User-defined format works in Data Prep but not in Report Designer

BenG — Wed, 25 May 2016 21:38:23 GMT

Hi Ted

Thanks for the link to that SASNOTE, it does sound very similar and is something I suspected. I'll raise it with support.

Without the "/" the format is pointless 🙂

I'll discuss it with my VA report writer. A workaround I've considered is to create the FY label as a new character variable.

Regards

Ben