Creating user defined date formats in SAS VA. Possible or not?

[donaldg]

Hi all

I'm wondering whether there is a way to use a non standard format for dates in SAS VA.  In particular I'd like to use something like DDMMYY8. (e.g. 15/11/18) to allow for narrower column widths on my SAS VA dashboards (trying to be more efficient with screen real estate for our iPad/tablet data consumers).  There does not appear to be an option to set your own formats.  The closest option is DDMMYYYY (e.g. 15/11/2018).

The data is being transformed in SAS DI Studio and I can set the Format to be DDMMYY8. which outputs the desired formed to the SAS table but this format is then overridden when the data is sent to VA.

I'm relatively new to SAS VA and so I appreciate I may just be missing something obvious.  However, I have spent a while googling this and can't find a solution.

Thanks in advance for any help suggested.

[SASKiwi · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately creating your own date-related formats in SAS VA to enhance the limited options available is specifically not supported:

http://support.sas.com/kb/50/035.html

I suspect VA 8.2 / 8.3 may offer more flexibility but I'm guessing you are using VA 7.x.

[donaldg]

Thanks for confirming @SASKiwi. 

We're using v7.4 at present and so hopefully that functionality will be made available in future releases.

[Madelyn_SAS]

You can create user-defined formats, apply them to your SAS data sets, and then load the data sets to the LASR server. That is explained in http://support.sas.com/kb/40/103.html

Visual Analytics support for user-defined formats is explained in http://support.sas.com/kb/47/100.html

[donaldg]

Thanks @Madelyn_SAS, that's really useful to know.  Our environment is pretty heavily locked down but at least I can now have a more informed discussion with the team who manage the config.

[SASKiwi]

@donaldg - Yes user-defined formats can be very useful in SAS VA. We use them a lot ourselves. One big advantage is they help to save a lot of LASR memory.

[donaldg]

Hi @SASKiwi, can you expand on how you are achieving this (as you explained in your initial response that user defined formats were not supported in SAS VA)?  Are you using the same approach as @Madelyn_SAS?

Thanks

[SASKiwi]

@donaldg - User-defined formats are supported in SAS VA EXCEPT for date-related one as specified in the link I posted. Do you want help with the non-date related ones?  If so read the links posted by @Madelyn_SAS.