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

Question

In Enterprise Guide, I draw scatter plots with creation and closing date of issues to detect when backloggs occur and when they are resolved: (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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

According to support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/vaug/68648/PDF/default/vaug.pdf , page 166, you could work on defining data roles for a scatter plot. I am not sure that this could solve your situation but it says that:

"In addition to measures, you can assign a Group variable. The Group variable groups the data based on the values of the category data item that you assign. A separate set of scatter points is created for each value of the group variable. You can add data items to the Data tips role. The values for the data items in the Data tips role are displayed in the data tips for the scatter plot".

Hope it helps.