Question
To see which series are available for a specific geography, create a filtered catalog.
Answer
Do you want to see which concepts are available for a specific geography, such as the New York-White Plains-Wayne metropolitan division (geo code IUSA_DMNEY)? This will also hint that the data may be available for all similar geos (but not necessarily).
Data Buffet provides a mechanism called a filtered catalog for this purpose. (The notion of a "filter" is common across database products, and is defined as reducing a large result set to a smaller set according to some criterion.) Please note that this only narrows your search; it does not perform any aggregate computation over constituent areas.
How to do this:
- From the Data Buffet menu, New » Filtered Catalog.
- The left pane will switch to the "Catalogs" tab (between "My Data" and "Search") and three drop-down boxes and two buttons will appear at its top.
- The first box lists your subscribed catalogs, such as "American Bankers Association D-LINQ" or "Forecast - Canada" or "Historical - Thailand." Pick one.
- The second box lists all the geo types applicable to that catalog.
- The third box lists all the areas of that geo type.
- Press the gray "Add Filtered Catalog" button.
- Your new filtered catalog appears at the top of tab. It is automatically saved; you can use it as often as necessary. Open and navigate the tree just as with a standard catalog.
If a filtered catalog is no longer of use, you can delete it. Right-click its name (alongside the yellow-rimmed funnel icon) to open its context menu, and pick "Remove."
Alternatives:
You can create a basket with a wild expression. For example, to retrieve all series in the New York metropolitan division, use ?.IUSA_DMNEY. Be warned that this may be a very long and disordered list, whereas a filtered catalog gives you structure.
If your interest is more general, spanning territories, a filtered catalog is a partial solution: Pick a specific area to serve as an exemplar for its type. This is not ideal, as many datasets are reported for only select areas. Instead, you can use a basket with a wild expression. For example, LBR.CS^^^ would retrieve the unemployment rate series that exist for any and all combined statistical areas (assuming any such series exist). A list of U.S. geo wild patterns appears elsewhere in this manual.
If our catalog does not contain any series at the geo level of interest, it's possible you can compute them yourself from their component areas. This is particularly true of U.S. core-based statistical areas (CBSAs or "metro areas"), which are aggregates of counties. In the Data Buffet Reference Files, Geographies section, consult our files that list the names, geo codes and components of all CBSAs.