Compute Field Transformation Welcome Page

Use this transformation to create a view that consists of an existing table or view with one or more new columns added to it. The new columns are defined in terms of the existing columns.

The Compute Field transformation supports much of the data preprocessing required for data mining. Each new column is defined as an expression based on the existing columns. You can create expressions using numeric, character string, and date attributes; the expressions can contain many functions, including character functions, conversion functions, date functions, numeric functions, analytical (statistical) functions, and missing value treatments. You can also create a new column using arithmetic operations, such as COLUMN_NEW = COLUMN_1 + COLUMN_2.

There are many reasons to compute new fields. One example is how to deal with dates. In many cases, specific dates are usually not interesting, but the elapsed time in days between dates may be very important. Calculate elapsed time as the first date minus the second date; the difference between two dates gives the number of days between the two dates.

When you click Finish on the last page of the wizard, it creates a view consisting of the original table or view with the new columns added and displays the details of the new view.

If you do not want to see this page the next time that you launch the wizard, check the Skip this Page Next Time box.

Click Next to continue.