Question
For a basket that contains forecast mnemonics, you can specify a prior vintage.
Answer
This is a new feature as of June 2019, in the Basket module, of Data Buffet "Blue" only.
At this time, the facility has these conditions:
- To retrieve a past vintage of a forecast, you must currently subscribe to that forecast product.
- The included forecast products are:
- U.S. macro, state and metro forecasts
- U.S. CoreLogic Case-Shiller House Price Index Forecast
- Global macro and subnational forecasts
- Alternative scenarios thereof
- The earliest vintage is January 2010.
- Only active mnemonics are retrievable (see "exception conditions" below).
- The basket may contain distinct mnemonics.
- The basket may contain wild card expressions or geo list expressions, which will expand to multiple distinct mnemonics.
- If the basket contains formulas, they will be computed with the current vintage of each operand-series, not the specified prior vintage.
Note that:
- The vintage is specified by a basket editor control, not a mutation to a forecast concept code (as with the scenario suffix).
- The basket may specify, and the output will contain, a single vintage.
- To retrieve several vintages, repeatedly edit the vintage date and re-execute the basket.
- In the output file, the vintage is denoted by the "databank" field, not the mnemonic.
To retrieve vintaged forecast series, edit an existing basket that contains forecast mnemonics, or create a new basket. In the basket editor:
- Click the "set vintage" control. It is located beneath the "title" text field, and to the right of the "range" control.
- In the dialog box that opens, click the calendar icon. A calendar dialog appears.
- Pick a year.
- Pick a month. (See image below.)
- The calendar dialog closes.
- In the vintage dialog, press the "set vintage" button.
- The dialog closes.
- The "set vintage" control changes to show the date.
Additionally:
- In the vintage dialog, the arrows flanking the date jump to the first available vintage (January 2010) or the last.
As usual, execute the basket with the "download" control, then download and open the output file. It will resemble the following. The chief indication that the output is vintaged is the "databank" field; we strongly suggest that you configure your basket to include this. You can also alter the output file name before executing (Settings » Output » File Name).
- Mnemonic: No change
- Description: No change
- Databank: Contains the vintage date, in "_yyyymm" form
- Last updated: A date within the vintage month
Exception conditions:
- If the "description" field reads "Series not found", it indicates the mnemonic is active (i.e., exists in the current vintage), but does not exist in the older requested vintage.
- "Series does not exist" - the mnemonic is not active (it existed in an older vintage but doesn't now) or is otherwise mistaken. (We sometimes drop concepts from our forecast models. For our U.S. metro model, a more common event is a change to the list of metro geo codes, prompted by an OMB redefinition.)
- "Series exists; access denied" - you are not permissioned for the series.
Note that the "last updated" field is meaningless under the "not found" and "does not exist" exceptions.
See also
Instructions:
Data operations:
Updates
- 17 Jun 2019 - Initial version of article
- 18 Jul - Caveat re: formulas