Add Date and Time Operators to Convert DateTime to/from TimeZones

[utrocketeng]

Would it be possible to add something like TZONES2U() (converts a SAS datetime to a UTC datetime) or TZONEU2S() (converts a UTC datetime to a SAS datetime) to the list of Data Time operators in SAS Visual Analytics.  this would allow for data sets to be stored with 1 datetime column that could be converted to local times on the fly.

[Quentin]

Interesting, does VA really have a separate variable type for UTC date-times?

In plain SAS, there is only a single SAS date-time type (which stores number of seconds since 01Jan1960), but you can use formats to produce strings in UTC format, e.g.:

9    data _null_ ;
10     t='01Feb2013T12:34:56'dt ;
11     put t b8601dx. t b8601lx. ;
12   run;

      20130201T083456-0400      20130201T123456-0400

[AnnaBrown]

Thanks for your idea, @utrocketeng. We'll keep this request in mind for future releases.