Utility Package
Using the UTL Package
The objects in the UTL package are subdivided into two different categories:
Stateful computational objects (the CLIMITS object)
Collector objects (the OUTNVP and UTLSTAT objects)
Collector objects provide a mechanism to create a snapshot of results (either from stateful objects or from plain program variables) and store those results into CAS tables. Each collector object defines a CAS table schema that is determined by the collector object’s design. The collector objects in the UTL package (OUTNVP and UTLSTAT) follow a common method pattern. The basic execution follows this sequence of operations:
Declare: Create the collector object by using the object declaration statement.
Collect: Use the Collect method to store results into a CAS table. The input arguments of the Collect method are specific to the collector object. For example, the UTLSTAT collector object’s Collect method requires an actual and predicted time series as arguments. It then uses the specified series to compute forecast fit statistics and stores the results in a CAS table. In contrast, the OUTNVP collector object’s Collect method takes in an ad hoc numerical scalar or array variable from the user program and stores it into a CAS table. Rows that are collected are automatically appended to the collector’s associated CAS table at the end of each BY group, and the collector object’s saved row set is automatically reset. The Nrows attribute returns the current row count in the collector. A missing value is returned if nothing has been collected. The data, now stored in CAS tables, can then be used to produce reports or be used in further computations.