Refreshing Project Data

SAS Visual Forecasting automatically checks for updates to the data sources from which a project is created. Data sources can include the time seriesan aggregation of transactional data into specified time intervals and sorted according to unique combinations of the default attributes (BY variables) data used to create the project, tables for additional attributes, and tables containing custom eventsan incident that disrupts the normal flow of any process that generates the time series. Examples of events are holidays, retail promotions, and natural disasters.. If the data has been changed, SAS Visual Forecasting updates the project data and notifies you about what tables were changed and anytime series that were removed or added. For more information, see Updating Time Series Data.

Note: After project data is updated or refreshed, a comparison with the original data is performed, and a report is provided showing the changes that were made to the project. This report can be generated only if the Data node has been run before the update.

To check for updates to the source data, follow these steps.

  1. Navigate to the project’s Data tab.
  2. In the left pane, click the Refresh all data sources icon.

All data sources are refreshed if their content has changed.

Note: You can also use a data refresh to remove any variables that are unassigned. For example, you can remove the unassigned variables from the original data source and perform a data refresh with the original data source. Or you can perform a data refresh using a copy of the original data source with the unassigned variables removed.

In the data source for the time series, if any of the variable formats are changed or if assigned variables are removed, the data refresh fails. If any variables have been added, you can assign them as new independent variables for the project.

For external forecasta numerical prediction of a future value for a specified time period for each unique combination of BY variable values projects, only unassigned variables can be removed from the data source. For more information, see Working with External Forecast Projects.

The data source for a project is kept in a CAS table in memory. In general, the source for this CAS table comes from a table stored on disk. If the source for the project's CAS table is not stored on disk, and CAS is restarted, you need to reload the table to memory in CAS. This triggers a refresh notification, even if the data has not actually been changed.

See Also

Last updated: March 16, 2026