| This post was kindly contributed by Key Happenings at support.sas.com - go there to comment and to read the full post. |
Today was site maintenance day for me. There were several pages that I needed to update. I have to be careful when I start working on these pages because I see a shiny thread and I follow it. Before I know it, it’s lunch time and I’ve been reading interesting SAS tidbits and haven’t completed my maintenance tasks. As you have seen in previous posts, I like to share my finds with you. When I see something interesting, I pop over to this blog to tell you about it.
Do you know that ZIP codes are constantly being updated? I didn’t, but Liz Simon does. She maintains the ZIP code data and the Maps Online Web site. In response to several customer requests, she put together a tip about updating your ZIP code data for use with SAS maps. She updates the SASHELP.ZIPCODE data set quarterly and makes it available to you for download. Quarterly?! They change that much? Who knew?
Here’s the tip teaser.
The zip file provided in the download is a SAS data set in transport format, and you should use this file to replace your existing SASHELP.ZIPCODE data set. The data set contains the following information:
- US ZIP codes and centroid xy coordinates for each code
- The variable, AreaCodes, which returns all area codes within a ZIP code
- The variable, Alias_City, which returns all cities within a ZIP code
You can use centroids and the associated data to:
- Calculate distances between ZIP codes and cities.
- Find nearest locations to a ZIP code.
- Perform address matching.
- Annotate locations on a map.
- When merged with marketing data, the SASHELP.ZIPCODE data set can enhance a company’s marketing strategy to a significant degree.
BTW, A centroid is the geographic center of the area defined by the ZIP code.
You can read the entire tip to get the download location and code samples. The tip is available on support.sas.com.
| This post was kindly contributed by Key Happenings at support.sas.com - go there to comment and to read the full post. |