Create Indicators

Create Indicators Node icon

The Clario Create Indicators node is used to create indicator or dummy attributes from string attributes by taking each unique value of a string attribute and turning it into an indicator or dummy attribute. The Create Indicators node performs a ‘One for All’ method of creating indicators, which creates one indicator attribute for each unique value of the selected string attribute. Indicators can be connected to the Read File node or other valid data streams.

Configuration

The Create Indicators node has two tabs, Configure and Write File.

Configure Tab

Configure Tab

The Configure tab contains an Available Attributes and a Selected Attributes list box. The Available Attributes list box displays all of the string attributes of the input data stream connected to the input link node connector. In order to create new indicator variables, select, drag and drop the desired attributes from the Available Attributes list box to the Selected Attributes list box. At least one attribute must be placed in the Selected Attributes list. See tips on Finding and Selecting Attributes

Write File Tab

Write File tab

The Create Indicators node is a terminal node and must write its results to a file (i.e. it cannot pass the data to another node). This is because when the workflow is created, it does not know how many values of each attribute there may be and therefore it does not know how many new attributes will be created.

To write the data to a file, do the following:

1. Click on the Write to File checkbox.
2. Click on the File Name button (see Figure) to launch the File Browser. In the blank field at the bottom of the file browser popup, enter the name of the file to be written (including file type suffix such as .csv, .dat, .txt, etc. if desired) or, select the desired file from the list, then click [OK]. If this file already exists, it will be overwritten.
3. Specify the field delimiter (such as a comma, pipe, tab, semi-colon, etc.).
4. If desired, specify the field enclosure (single quote or double quote) in the ‘Enclosure’ box. Leave this empty if you do not want an enclosure.
5. Specify the number format. Typically, you will want an integer (#) format (#), since the indicators will include values of 0 or 1.
6. Click on the Include Header Row check box to include a header row of attribute names in the output data file.

Once a file has been selected, you can click the Raw File Preview button to display the first 50 unformatted rows of the selected file. But you can only view the data once it is created, after the run.

Results

The results set for the Create Indicators node contains two tabs, Summary and Pseudo Code.

Summary Tab

This tab contains the processing summary of the Create Indicators node. The summary will show one row of data for each attribute selected with three different result columns (number of Observed Values, number of Null Values, and Number of Indicators Created).

Summary tab

Pseudo Code Tab

This tab contains rules for how the new indicator attributes will be created.

Pseudo Code tab

Output Stream

Create Indicators is a terminal node. Therefore, in order for the newly created indicators to be utilized in other Clario processes, the resulting file must be written out and read in by another workflow. The data export does not require a Write File node, as the Write to File option will write out a new file with the original data and new indicators. However, the Read File node is needed to bring the dataset back into processing.