Date:         Tue, 11 Jul 2000 00:27:46 -0400
Reply-To:     Richard DeVenezia <radevenz@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Richard DeVenezia <radevenz@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Organization: MindSpring Enterprises
Subject:      Looking for By Groups, Classes, Hierarchies standard terminology

We are all familiar with the concept, a table and a list of columns that
describe a hierarchy.

e.g. a table with columns year, quarter, month, week, country, state,
county, id, nThis, nThat, nThose, sizeThis, weightThat, tempThose.

I ran into the problem of 'what should I name this thing' when I was writing
an AF model/viewer that takes a data set name and a list of column names and
returns an SCL list enumerating all the combinations of values of the
columns in a format that is passable to the Tree View Control.  I ended up
choosing DataSetHierarchyClassLevelsModel.class and TreeViewNodes.intrface

If anybody has ideas of a better name, I'm all ears.

I am looking for what might be the most common terminology for discussing
such topics
[I have placed in () the areas of SAS where I've encountered various
terminology for essentially the same thing]

right angled thing containing data
- data set (data step)
- table (sql)
- view (data step, sql)
- access (access)
- NWAY cube (mddb)
- matrix (iml)

variables (columns) that are useful for aggregation are known as
- by variables (data step)
- group by columns (sql)
- categorical variables (graph)
- class variables (tabulate)
- classification variables (mddb)

like minded combinations of these variables are known as
- dimensions (mddb)

any combination of these variables is known as
- hierarchy (mddb)
- crossing (tabulate, mddb)
- group (data step, sql)
- drill-path (eis)

one unique combination of  the (row) values of the variables is known as
- class level
- level
- category (tabulate)
- by group (data step, sql)

the set of all unique combinations of  the (row) values of the variables is
known as
- class levels
- levels
- categories (tabulate)
- by groups (data step)

variables that record a value other than one used in one or more hierarchies
- measurement variables
- metric variables
- analysis variables

--
Richard DeVenezia
SAS Tips and Tools - http://pweb.netcom.com/~radevenz