Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 12:47:48 -0700
Reply-To: Alan Churchill <SASL001@SAVIAN.NET>
Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: Alan Churchill <SASL001@SAVIAN.NET>
Subject: Re: standardizing addresses
In-Reply-To: <8AD8F86B3312F24CB432CEDDA71889F2014EDA64@ex06.GHCMASTER.GHC.ORG>
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Roy,
SAS is part of the Web Services Initiative (WSI) but I haven't seen moves
toward SOAs or web services as of yet. Perhaps SUGI will enlighten me (or
someone on SAS-L will).
For using XML extensively, I defer to C# and .NET. The language was built
around XML support so it has it in spades. Wrapping SAS is more than doable
either in Base, IntrNet, or Int Tech, depending upon the need. Hence,
everything works.
SAS needs XPath support, web services support, and stronger XML support for
native reading of files without defining them through XML Mapper. They'll
get there, I'm sure.
My opinion of course...but I am in left field.
Alan
Alan Churchill
Savian "Bridging SAS and Microsoft Technologies"
www.savian.net
-----Original Message-----
From: Pardee, Roy [mailto:pardee.r@ghc.org]
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 12:35 PM
To: Alan Churchill; SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: RE: standardizing addresses
Same here--tho I've only ever looked at the web service capabilities of
.net and ruby (and the latter only as a client of web services). But I
imagine other languages/environments have some sort of credible offering
in that realm.
FWIW--I did just a teeny bit of playing around w/this way back using
vb.net, and came to the tentative conclusion that they are *not*
offering a standard web service interface on this. You won't find a
WSDL document for instance (or I didn't anyway). But it does respond to
xml requests with xml responses--I think you've just got to XQuery (or
whatever the xml query language is these days) the info out of the
response your own self.
So given that you've got to get down into the xml muck, I wonder what it
would take to have sas drive this thing? I am utterly ignorant of sas'
xml capabilities, except that I'm vaguley aware there's an xml
libname...
Cheers,
-Roy
-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Churchill [mailto:SASL001@savian.net]
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 11:27 AM
To: Pardee, Roy; SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: RE: standardizing addresses
Good to know.
.net does a better job with web services than anything else I have seen
which is why Don Henderson and I used it for wrapping SAS\IntrNet.
SAS does not natively support web services (from what I know) so you
need a wrapper technology.
Alan Churchill
Savian "Bridging SAS and Microsoft Technologies"
www.savian.net
-----Original Message-----
From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Pardee, Roy
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 12:14 PM
To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: standardizing addresses
One other thing to consider if your addresses are all in the US is the
USPS' web tools, which give a sort-of web service API to their
standardization code.
http://www.usps.com/webtools/address.htm
It may be challenging to get at that w/sas, but if you've got expertise
on hand in other languages (vb, java, ruby) it might not be too hard to
get together.
HTH,
-Roy
-----Original Message-----
From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
David L Cassell
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 10:26 AM
To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: standardizing addresses
clinton.rickards@GE.COM wrote:
>I'm looking for software, preferrably in the form of SAS code/macros,
>that will standardize addresses. By standardize I mean recoding the
>addresses to handle such things as:
> road = rd
> street = st
> avenue = ave = av
> apartment/suite numbers
> city names
> state names
> parts of addresses being in different variables (e.g. sometimes
>apartment is in line 1, sometimes in line 2)
>
>I figure that it would be easier to buy rather than build such
>functionality. If any one can point me toward such software I'd
>appreciate it.
Monal pointed you at DataFlux, which SAS sells. It's expensive. As are
*all* the programs which do data cleaning and homogenization like this.
That's because there are only intensely-complex homegrown programs which
companies keep proprietary, or else really expensive general programs
which sell for amounts which make SAS look cheap.
You may be able to patch together code which does the standardization
that you want, without spending $60K. But that standardization may not
do all the things that you really want to be able to do with the data.
David
--
David L. Cassell
mathematical statistician
Design Pathways
3115 NW Norwood Pl.
Corvallis OR 97330
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