Date:         Mon, 1 Nov 2004 17:53:33 -0600
Reply-To:     "Oliver, Richard" <richard@spss.com>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Oliver, Richard" <richard@spss.com>
Subject:      Re: SPSS version 13.0
Comments: To: Tara Bisel <tara@sheeo.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Disclaimer: I'm an SPSS employee, so my opinion may be biased, but here's what the Help system says about data management related new features:

The Date and Time Wizard makes it easy to perform many calculations with dates and times, including calculating the difference between dates and adding or subtracting a duration from a date.

You can append aggregated results to the working data file. (Enhancements to both the UI and AGGREGATE command)

You can create consistent autorecoding schemes for multiple variables and data files. (Enhancements to both the UI and AUTORECODE command)

String values can be up to 32,767 bytes long. Previously, the limit was 255 bytes.

Related to the Date and Time Wizard, there are two new date/time calculation functions:

DATEDIFF(datetime2, datetime1, "unit"). Numeric. Calculates the difference between two date/time values and returns an integer (with any fraction component truncated) in the specified date/time units, where datetime2 and datetime1 are both date or time format variables (or numeric values that represent valid date/time values), and "unit" is one of the following string literal values, enclosed in quotes: years, quarters, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds.


DATESUM(datetime, value, "unit", "method"). Numeric. Calculates a date or time value a specified number of units from a given date or time value, where datetime is a date or time format variable (or numeric value that represents a valid date/time value), and "unit" is one of the following string literal values, enclosed in quotes: years, quarters, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds. The optional method, enclosed in quotes, can be "rollover" or "closest". The rollover method advances excess days into the next month. The closest method uses the closest legitimate date within the month; this is the default. The value returned is a date/time value expressed as a number of seconds. To display the value as a date/time, assign the appropriate format to the variable.

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Tara Bisel
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2004 5:29 PM
To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: SPSS version 13.0

Hello all,
I currently use 12.0 and I am thinking of upgrading to 13.0.  Can anyone run down the top 5 or so things that have changed/improved with the new version?  Particularly with regard to data management functionality.


Thanks,

Tara Bisel