SAS® Visual Analytics displays "The analytic variable's data type is not supported" or displays unexpected zeros for some measures


Overview

The SAS® Cloud Analytics (CAS) engine supports only DOUBLE as a data type for numeric variables. This means that SAS Visual Analytics cannot reliably use a measure that is stored as any data type other than DOUBLE. 

Examples of Unexpected Behavior

For example, if the measure is stored as INT or BIGINT, then you might see an error that is similar to to the following when you attempt to use the measure in one of the following ways:

An error occurred. com.sas.cas.CASException: The analytic variable's data type is
     not supported (severity=2, reason=0, statusCodes=3820798)
5 ERROR: The analytic variable's data type not supported.
5 ERROR: The action stopped due to errors.
Debug=0x8bff31e:TKCASAGG_ANALYTIC_DATATYPE_NOT_SUPPORTED

In addition, if you are using the numeric data item in a row-level security filter expression, filtered results might include values that do not exist, or you might see all zeros when you change the format. 

You would also encounter problems if you imported a report that was using measures stored as DOUBLE but the measures in the target environment are stored as INT or BIGINT.

This restriction applies even if the measure is being used as a category.

Resolution

In order to use the measure in SAS Visual Analytics, you must convert the variable to DOUBLE in the source, and then reload the table into CAS.

For more information about data types supported by CAS actions, see the "Data Types" topic in the SAS Programming documentation for your release.