plotsassas-visual-analytics

Cant I use dates as axes in a scatter plot in SAS VA?

In Enterprise Guide, I draw scatter plots with creation and closing date of issues to detect when backloggs occur and when they are resolved: enter image description here (The straight lines in the graph are batch interventions, like closing a set of issues that were handled outside ot the system.)

proc sgplot data=alert;
scatter x=create_Date y=CloseDate / group=CloseReason;
run;

When I try to do the same in SAS Visual Analytics, I can only put measures on the x-ax and y-ax and I cant make te date or datetime variable a measure. Do I do something wrong? Should I use another graph type?

Solution

  • My take is that the inability of SAS VA Explorer to allow dates to be measures is a real weakness. Old school trickery would be perhaps to create a duplicate data item that computes the SAS data value (giving you a number result and thus a measure) and then formatting that with a custom format to render it back as a human readable date.

    However, according to http://support.sas.com/kb/47/100.html#explorer

    How SAS Visual Analytics Designer supports formats

    In SAS Visual Analytics Designer, the Format property of the data item displays the name of the format for both numeric and character data items. However, there are some differences between numeric and character data items.

    Numeric data items

  • You can change the format. If you change the format, you can restore the user-defined format by selecting Reset to Default in the Format type box.
  • You can specify to sort by formatted or unformatted values (release 6.2 and later).
  • (My bolds) Numeric data items with a user-defined format are classified as categories. You cannot change these data items to measures while the user-defined format is applied.