Extracting/Selecting observations of the last 20 mins of a SAS data set

[plnc]

Hey guys,

I hope anyone can help me on this.

I have a data set, which is continuously updated. For each observation, I have the time and date when the observations entered the data set. Currently I am calculating a number of metrics (means etc.) for the whole data set using a proc tabulate, which is working fine. However, I would like to perform my analysis not on the entire data set but only on the observations of the last 20 or 30 minutes from the moment, I request my metrics (System Time). Is there a way to include this restriction into a WHERE statement in the proc tabulate or is there a simple way to extract this time interval (last 20 min.) and create a new data set and then run the analysis?

Thank you guys.

Kind regards

[Haikuo]

One possibility is to put WHERE condition as a data set option, somewhere like:

PROC TABULATE data=foo (WHERE=);

CLASS ...;

VAR ...;

TABLE ...;

RUN;

[Kurt_Bremser]

Sort to a new dataset by descending time, then retain the time from _n_ = 1, and use a subsetting if with reference_time - 20*60 (as SAS time is stored in seconds)