Advanced Join Macro - UPDATE and MODIFY datasets

[paul_eykamp]

It would be really useful to have a Join function that updated an existing file (not a database, but a flat or yxdb file).

The rough SAS equivalent are the UPDATE and MODIFY Statements

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/basess/58133/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a001329151.htm

The goal would be to have a join function that would allow you to update a master dataset's missing variables from a transaction database and, optionally, to overwrite values on the master data set with current ones, without duplicating records, based on a common key.

The use case is you have an original file, new information comes in and you want to fill in the data that was originally missing without overwriting the original data (if there is data on the transaction file for that variable). In this case only missing data is changed.

Or as a separate use case, you had original data which has now been updated and you do want to overwrite the original data. In this case any variable with new values is updated, and variables without new values is left unchanged.

Why this is needed: if you don't have a Oracle type database, it is difficult to do this task inside of Alteryx and information changes over time (customers buy new products, customers update profiles, you have a file that is missing some data, and want to merge with a file that has better data for missing values, but worse data for exisitng values (it is from a different time period (e.g. older)).  In theory you could do this with "IF isnull() Then replace" statements, but you'd have to build them for each variable and have a long data flow to capture the correct updates. Now is is much faster to do it in SAS and import the updated file back into Alteryx.

[Community_Admin]

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