Distributed Geocoding Node

NOTE: Beginning July 31, 2023, SAS will no longer support or provide updates the following data packs:

Users that want to perform US/Canada address verification and geocode jobs, must migrate to the Loqate data packs listed below, prior to July 31, 2023.

After July 31, 2023, the SAS Data Management Studio jobs that rely on the discontinued data packs fail and you will receive license errors. See the SAS Data Management Studio and Server 2.9: Migration Guide for Data Packs for additional information.

You can add a Distributed Geocoding node to a data job to offload geocode processing to a machine other than the one running the current SAS Data Management Studio job. This node is particularly useful when running on a SAS Data Management Server because it offers a large performance increase by eliminating the overhead of connecting to the county reference database when starting a real-time service. The node also enables you to open many Geocoding services at once. Previously, a memory limitation prevented multiple services from being opened.

Use the Distributed Geocoding node to match geographic information from the geocode reference database with ZIP codes in your data to determine latitude, longitude, census tract, Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS), and block information. To achieve accurate results you must have valid ZIP or ZIP+4 code values in your address data for US geocoding and full post codes for Canadian address geocoding. A US 5-digit ZIP code will return only the longitude and latitude; a US ZIP+4 additionally provides the other Geocoding outputs.

Note Note: To use this node you must have SAS Data Management Server: Basic installed and licensed. For additional information about SAS Data Management Server: Basic installation and configuration please refer to the SAS Data Management Server: Basic Reference Guide. After you have installed and configured SAS Data Management Server: Basic, you must add the following key and value to the app.cfg file:

DFCLIENT/CFG = <INTELLISERVER CLIENT CONFIGURATION FILE>

For example:

DFCLIENT/CFG = C:\Program Files\SAS\dfIntelliServer\etc\dfclient.cfg

Once you have added the Distributed Geocoding node, you can double-click it to open its properties window. The properties window includes the following elements:

Name - Specifies a name for the node.

Notes - Enables you to open the Notes window. You use the window to enter optional details or any other relevant information for the input.

Postal/ZIP Code - Enables you to specify your ZIP or Postal code values.

The Output fields section of the window includes the following elements:

Available - Displays the fields that you can make available for the next step in your data job. Items displayed in this list are dependent on your data sources and any preceding steps in your data job.

Selected - Displays the fields that will be made available to the next node in your data job.

Additional Outputs - Displays the Additional Outputs window. This window enables you to specify the fields that you can make available to the next node in your data job.

Override Server - Enables you to override the default connection to the dfIntelliServer specified in the dfclient.cfg file. (See the SAS Data Management Server: Basic Reference Guide for more information about configuration settings). If you want to override the default server setting and perform the area code lookup on a different dfIntelliServer instance, you can specify the server name in the Override Server field and port number on this window.

You can access the following advanced properties by right-clicking the Distributed County node: