I'm finding that this method does not account for days difference greater than 365, e.g., June 1, 2014 to May 31, 2016. ... View more

the difference is typically how the data is presented. List table is good to showcase uni dimensional data with minimal rows. If more rows then more filters and selections must be used else the user will find difficult to observe the data. Crosstab is great to present multidimensional data. It is used to perform rollup, mashup and has capability to hold any dimensions. You also have an option to create hierarchy on the fly once you have dropped your needed data items in the crosstab which is cool. greetings ... View more

Well, there is no generic approach in getting this automated as there are many different ways to describe a relationship. In your example you define the relationship as user1.talkName = user2.talkName but there could be others such as user1.lastName eq user2.lastName, etc. In social networks you often take a predefinied relationship such as user1 follows user2. A simple SQL join on your data by comparing the talkName would probably create the required structure. However you will find that a merge like this will produce a link from user1->user2 as well as link from user2->user1 as both are valid conditions for the relationship before. While VA can handle multi-links between entities its a rather confusing network to look at. You may also want to consider introducing additional nodes in your network such as the actual talkName so users who are mentioned in each talk are grouped/clustered together. Also, include some additional measures / categories which you can use to highlight stronger or weaker relationships (VA allows you to visualize this by using wider links or different colors). Maybe check out the OPTGRAPH procedure if you have access to it as this provides a great set of additional network algorithms and can give you additional measures such as Eigenvector or degree - important measures when doing social network analysis. Cheers, Falko ... View more