How to determine matched data

[Courtney-GOV]

I have a dataset where we measured a variable with two different systems (visual observations and an automatic system). How can I determine which are matching pairs based on date, time and duration of the activity? 

Thank you,

Courtney 

[art297]

Can you provide examples of the two datasets and the criteria you'd like to use to match records?

Art, CEO, AnalystFinder.com

[ballardw]

Will the date and time be exactly the same in both systems? Will the duration be the same in both systems?

Will either data set have observations within the set that overlap in time?Example: Obs 1 has 12/20/2015 12:00:00 duration 1 hour and obs 2 has 12/20/2015 12:15:00 duration 50 minutes. So obs 2 overlaps obs 1.

To allow use of all of the SAS functions involving dates and time it sounds like you may want to make one datetime variable for the start time and a second for the end time as start datetime + duration (in seconds). Then you will be able to test if, or join where, one value is between the others, and possibly within some interval if there is overlapping data involved.