Area Processing is the generation of tables by a defined hierarchical structure of area codes. If the geographic hierarchy of a hypothetical country is region, province, locality (major-to-minor order), it may be necessary to produce tables for each of these sub-divisions.
To use area processing you must have done the following:
• Created an area names file (.anm)
• Selected one or more Area IDs from the area IDs dialog box
For example, suppose we wish to perform geographic area processing for our top-most units of geography, which are Province and District (choose them in the Area IDs dialog box). Each tabulation will be repeated for each Province and District in the data file. In addition, a summary entry [Total] will be shown for the entire data file. The tabulation will be displayed in the following order:
Total
Province 1
District 1 (of Province 1)
District 2 (of Province 1)
District 3 (of Province 1)
Province 2
District 1 (of Province 2)
District 2 (of Province 2)
District 3 (of Province 2)
:
:
Area Processing will apply to all tables in your application.
No File Processing: It is also possible to produce tables without creating an area names file. Select the levels of geography desired but after clicking on the Traffic Light button in CSPro to run your tables, leave the <Area Names> field blank. CSPro will use codes from the data file instead of names for each level of geography. For example, if province Gluten's code is 20, the tables will show code 20 instead of the name Gluten. This can be useful for generating a list of every geographic code found in a data file.
See also: Area Names File,