(This article was originally published on the see-change.co website)
Some techniques for setting up integration between the SAS and Tableau solutions, specifically with respect to date formats.
SAS and Tableau are ‘best of breed’ in their own areas – SAS in the area of Analytics and ‘Analytical Data Preparation’, Tableau in the area of data visualization and interactive dashboarding in an intuitive, drag & drop environment. Consequently, it makes sense to find ways to integrate these technologies to provide an Integrated Information Framework which leverages the strengths of both solutions.
Leveraging SAS capabilities in this way provides a way to ‘rapid prototype’ business reporting requirements, without the costs and delays typically seen when attempting to model emerging business requirements in the Data Warehouse via traditional ETL methods.
In addition, this approach suggests a way to protect the investment in analytical reporting as developed by the SAS team, by providing a platform to publish those reports for easy consumption, plus easy re-formatting and ‘slice & dice’ of these reports in the Tableau environment
Example
Typically, the easiest way to prepare SAS data for consumption in Tableau is to set up an export process in SAS Enterprise Guide:
Using the SAS Enterprise Guide Export wizard, a SAS dataset can be exported as CSV, as a step in the process. Dataset is exported to a network location. SAS process looks like this, and can be set up to run on a schedule eg monthly.
In this example, we have a number of dates in our SAS dataset:
Often, the default date format as set up in SAS is adequate to be imported into, and correctly interpreted by, Tableau.
Where this is not the case, the SAS date format ‘DDMMYYS8.’ can be used:
Which would produce SAS code similar to the following:
PROC SQL;
CREATE TABLE WORK.QUERY_FOR_POLICY1 AS
SELECT t1.trandate FORMAT=DDMMYYS8.,
t1.polexpdt FORMAT=DDMMYYS8.,
t1.commdate FORMAT=DDMMYYS8.
FROM WORK.QUERY_FOR_POLICY t1
QUIT;
On importing the dataset into Tableau, the dates are correctly interpreted, automatically providing the ability to drill from Year to Quarter to Month:
Note: While it is generally easier to prepare the data in the most appropriate format for Tableau using the extensive SAS’ data functions and formatting options, there are also date functions within Tableau. For example, to convert a text (string) field containing dates in the format YYYYMMDD into a date within Tableau, the following could be set up as a calculated field:
Date(right([PERIOD],2) + “/” + mid([PERIOD],5,2) + “/” + left([PERIOD],4))
Summary
In addition to the approach described above, another way to ‘prepare’ SAS data for consumption in Tableau involves using the SAS ‘PROC SQL’ method to output SAS results directly to a relational table. With the SAS/ACCESS interface, database objects can be referenced directly in a DATA step or SAS procedure using the SAS LIBNAME statement. PROC SQL can be used to update, delete or insert data into a relational table, for example via Bulk Load.
