Bar Graph by Month - SAS EG - sas

Question

I am trying to create a bar graph in SAS Enterprise Guide. The graph is Savings by Month.
The input Data is
Ref Date Savings
A 03JUN2013 1000
A 08JUN2013 2000
A 08JUL2013 1500
A 08AUG2013 300
A 08NOV2013 100
B 09DEC2012 500
B 09MAY2013 400
B 19MAY2013 5999
B 09OCT2013 511
C 15OCT2013 1200
C 01NOV2013 1500
The first step I do is to convert the date into month. The I use PROC MEANS to calculate total savings by month by Ref.
Then I create a bar graph. The issue I am getting is the bar graph is not in a sequential order as it should be. Like it is AUG13 JUl13 JUN13 .. etc. instead of JUN JUL AUG.
PROC SQL;
CREATE TABLE SAVINGS_11 AS
SELECT
PUT(DATE,monname3.) AS MONTH,
(DATE) FORMAT=MONNAME3. AS MONTH1,
MONTH(DATE) AS MONTH2,
PUT(DATE,MONYY5.) AS MONTH3,
(DATE) FORMAT=MONYY5. AS MONTH4,
DATE,
REF,
SAVINGS
FROM INPUT;
QUIT;
/* -------------------------------------------------------------------
Sort data set
------------------------------------------------------------------- */
PROC SORT
DATA=SAVINGS_11(KEEP=SAVINGS MONTH MONTH1 MONTH2 MONTH3 MONTH4 REF)
OUT=SORT1;
BY REF;
RUN;
/* -------------------------------------------------------------------
Run the Means Procedure
------------------------------------------------------------------- */
TITLE;
TITLE1 "Summary";
TITLE2 "Results";
FOOTNOTE;
PROC MEANS DATA=SORT1
NOPRINT
CHARTYPE
NOLABELS
NWAY
SUM NONOBS ;
VAR SAVINGS;
CLASS MONTH / ORDER=DATA ASCENDING;
BY REF;
ID MONTH1 MONTH2 MONTH3 MONTH4;
OUTPUT OUT=MEANSUMMARY
SUM()=
/ AUTONAME AUTOLABEL WAYS INHERIT
;
RUN;
/* -------------------------------------------------------------------
End of task code.
------------------------------------------------------------------- */
RUN; QUIT;
TITLE; FOOTNOTE;
PROC SORT
DATA=MEANSUMMARY(KEEP=MONTH MONTH2 "SAVINGS_Sum"n REF)
OUT=SORT2
;
BY REF MONTH2;
RUN;
Axis1
STYLE=1
WIDTH=1
MINOR=NONE
;
Axis2
STYLE=1
WIDTH=1
;
TITLE;
TITLE1 "Bar Chart";
FOOTNOTE;
PROC GCHART DATA=SORT2
;
VBAR
MONTH
/
SUMVAR="SAVINGS_Sum"n
CLIPREF
FRAME LEVELS=ALL
TYPE=SUM
INSIDE=SUM
COUTLINE=BLACK
RAXIS=AXIS1
MAXIS=AXIS2
;
BY REF;
/* -------------------------------------------------------------------
End of task code.
------------------------------------------------------------------- */
RUN; QUIT;
TITLE; FOOTNOTE;
Whatever format I use, the end result is not in a sequential order. Please help.

Answer 1

Your problem is that you're converting the date value to a character variable. MONTH, at least, should be a formatted date variable, not a character variable; so this line:
PUT(DATE,monname3.) AS MONTH,
should be
DATE AS MONTH FORMAT=monname3.,
Most procedures (like PROC MEANS and PROC GPLOT) will respect formats and group by same-formatted values. I don't completely understand why you have 5 month variables all containing different versions of the same thing, so perhaps there are better ways to do what you're doing here.
In particular, if you have SAS 9.2 or later, SGPLOT will probably do this entire process for you without any of the summarization steps.

Answer 2

Apart from what Joe mentioned above, you also need to include the key word DISCRETE in your VBAR statement if you want to be able to see all months for each reference on the x-axis where they made a saving (Note: this wil generate warning messages if some references do not have any savings in some months).
You could try the following code which I believe produces the output you are after:
PROC SQL;
CREATE TABLE DATA_TO_PLOT AS
SELECT
REF
,INPUT(PUT(date,YYMMN6.),YYMMN6.) FORMAT =DATE9. AS MONTH
,SUM(Savings) AS MONTHLY_SAVINGS
FROM INPUT
GROUP BY 1,2
ORDER BY 1,2 ;
QUIT;
Axis1 STYLE=1 WIDTH=1 MINOR=NONE;
Axis2 STYLE=1 WIDTH=1;
TITLE;
TITLE1 "Bar Chart";
PROC GCHART DATA=DATA_TO_PLOT;
VBAR MONTH
/ SUMVAR=MONTHLY_SAVINGS
CLIPREF
FRAME TYPE=SUM
COUTLINE=BLACK
RAXIS=AXIS1
MAXIS=AXIS2
INSIDE=SUM
DISCRETE
;
FORMAT MONTH MONYY7.;
BY Ref;
RUN; QUIT;