FORECAST Command and Macro

The FORECAST command invokes the Time Series Forecasting System. The command must be specified from the command line or an SCL program. If you need to submit from the program editor, use the %FORECAST macro instead. You can use the macro within a data step program, but you must submit it within the SAS windowing environment.

If the FORECAST command or %FORECAST macro is issued without arguments, the Time Series Forecasting window appears. This is equivalent to selecting "Time Series Forecasting System" from the Analysis submenu of the Solutions menu.

Using the arguments, it is possible to do the following:

• Bring up the system with information already filled into some of the fields

• Bring up the system starting at a different window than the default Time Series Forecasting window

• Run the system in unattended mode so that a task such as creating a forecast data set is accomplished without any user interaction. By submitting such commands repeatedly from a SAS/AF or SAS/EIS application, it is possible to do "batch" processing for many data sets or by-group processing for many subsets of a data set. You can create a project in unattended mode and later open it for inspection interactively. You can also create a project interactively in order to set options, fit a model, or edit the list of models, and then use this project later in unattended mode.

The Forecast Command Builder, a point-and-click SAS/AF application, makes it easy to specify, run, save, and rerun forecasting jobs by using the FORECAST command. To use it, enter the following on the command line (not the program editor):

%FCB

or

AF C=SASHELP.FORCAST.FORCCMD.FRAME.