Dan Heath is a principal systems developer at SAS Institute. A SAS user for more than 28 years, Dan specializes in SAS/GRAPH software, ODS Graphics, and related graphing technologies. Dan has been a speaker at a number of regional and local users' group meetings, including SAS Global Forum, PharmaSUG, and WUSS. He received a BS degree in computer science from North Carolina State University.
The Graph Template Language (GTL) is a powerful tool for creating a wide range of graphic displays. One feature GTL has is the ability to combine independent plots together into one paneled display. The SG procedures have some limited capabilities in this area; but in this post, I am going
Amazing things can be created when you start with small pieces and stack them together. Just ask Bryan Berg. He is the current world record holder for the tallest house of cards. This same principle can be applied to the SGPLOT and SGPANEL procedures. You can take the individual plot
The SGPLOT procedure supports a wide variety of plot types that you can use directly or combine together to create more complex graphs. Even with this flexibility, there might be times you run across a graph that you cannot create using one of the standard plot types. An "area" bar
When creating bar charts, it is very common to display labels with the bars to make it easier to determine the bar values or to provide additional information in the chart. However, these labels can take away valuable data space, particularly if you generate a smaller-sized graph. As you see
Tool tip and drill-down functionality is commonly used to explore plot data in a graph, particularly on the web. Occasionally, you might even have the need to add this drill-down functionality to your titles or footnotes, possibly to reference more details or source information. The TITLE and FOOTNOTE statements in
Recently, I was asked about a formatting situation where the DOLLAR8.2 format was specified on the data column, but the cents on the axis showed showed just one digit instead of the two requested by the format. data example; input time money; datalines; 1 1 2 1.5 3 2 4
In this final post for 2012, I would like to finish up the panel sorting topic with a discussion on sorting the panel cells by statistic. With this sort, the response or dependent data in each cell is calculated down to a single statistic value (mean or median, for example). These values are
The SGPANEL procedure is used to create panelled graphics based on classification variables. The panelled cells are generated starting from either the top left (the default) or the bottom left of the panel, controllable by the START option. Currently, the ordering of the cells is determined by two criteria: 1.
The Swiss army knife is known for its versatility, with a variety of tools and blades to help you complete the task at hand. When you are creating graphics, you sometimes have a special feature you want to add, but you can't seem to find the right syntax "tool" to
In the previous post, “Roses are red, violets are blue…”, I discussed the general problem of getting style attributes to line up with specific group values and some ways to overcome the problem. In this installment, I want to elaborate on the attribute map functionality in the Graph Template Language
This classic start to a romantic poem assumes that the correct colors are always assigned to the correct flowers; but, for those who create graphs for reports, consistent color assignment can be more of a challenge than an assumption. This challenge is particularly true for the display of group values.
Recently, I had a discussion with a user concerning the volume of imagemap data generated for an interactive, web-based visual contain a large number of graphs. The large amount of imagemap data was causing problems with the current version of their web browser. The graphs consisted of either bar charts
An issue that SAS/GRAPH users have wrestled with in the past has been how to put tick marks at irregular intervals on their axes. In PROC GPLOT, if you specify irregular intervals using the ORDER option on the AXIS statement, the procedure’s axis kicks into a “discrete” mode, where the
When I give presentations on using the SG procedures, I try to describe how you can take simple plots and layer them to create more complex graphs. I also emphasize how you must consider the output of each plot type so that, as you overlay them, you do not obscure
The Unicode character table contains a vast array of characters and symbols that can be quite useful for making your text more descriptive in your graph. These characters can be inserted into any viewable string that you can define in the GTL or SG procedure syntax. These strings include titles,
