BookmarkSubscribeRSS Feed
LoisHNewMexico
Calcite | Level 5
Does SAS have geospatial tabulation capabilities? For instance, if I have data that include geospatial coordinates for each record, can I perform operations that require spatial capability, such as, "sum all variable x for county a" in which county a is a shape?

Sorry if this sounds vague. I have a contractor who is proposing PostGIS as an alternative solution to SAS, and I am wondering what geospatial capabilities SAS might have of which I am unaware. It seems like the basic capability is ability to use geocodes in the data, and to use shape file information with those geocodes.

I'm going to bet that the capability is another layer, not a part of SAS, per se, but something based on a relationship between SAS and ESRI. ??
1 REPLY 1
GraphGuy
Meteorite | Level 14
SAS has several geospatial capabilities, built-in and otherwise.
I'll list a few below ...

SAS/Graph ships with many geographical maps (such as a world map, maps of each continent, and maps of most countries, and US maps by state & county), and "proc gmap" can plot data on these maps in several ways (such as choropleth maps that color each map area based on the response data values).

"proc mapimport" can be used to import shape-files into SAS maps that can be used by "proc gmap".

We have "proc geocode" which can estimate the latitude/longitude of addresses, and once you have lat/long coordinates, you can annotate markers on a map at those locations (the marker shape/color/size can be controlled).

We have "proc ginside" to tell whether a point is inside of a map area (for example, is a certain lat/long value inside a given state in the US map ... or you can create your own map polygon for a circle of a given radius and determine which points are inside that circle). Here's an example demonstrating "proc ginside"...

http://robslink.com/SAS/democd29/customer.htm

We also have functions to determine the distance between two lat/long points.

And, we have an interactive GIS product called SAS/GIS.

All of the above are built into SAS.

...

Then, we have a couple of things that allow you to use SAS and ESRI together.
For example, the "SAS Bridge to ESRI" allows you to send data from ESRI
over to SAS for statistical analytics, and then SAS passes the "answer" back
to ESRI.

hackathon24-white-horiz.png

The 2025 SAS Hackathon Kicks Off on June 11!

Watch the live Hackathon Kickoff to get all the essential information about the SAS Hackathon—including how to join, how to participate, and expert tips for success.

YouTube LinkedIn

How to Concatenate Values

Learn how use the CAT functions in SAS to join values from multiple variables into a single value.

Find more tutorials on the SAS Users YouTube channel.

SAS Training: Just a Click Away

 Ready to level-up your skills? Choose your own adventure.

Browse our catalog!

Discussion stats
  • 1 reply
  • 1538 views
  • 0 likes
  • 2 in conversation