topic Re: Programmatically update ONLY ONE aspect of a table (e.g. a column length) with PROC METALIB (or in SAS Data Management

Programmatically update ONLY ONE aspect of a table (e.g. a column length) with PROC METALIB (or othe

Anne_A — Mon, 15 May 2023 06:26:23 GMT

Dear all,
Is there a way to programmatically update ONLY ONE aspect of a table (e.g. a column length) metadata (metadata server metadata; this is not about the descriptor portion of a SAS dataset)? The SELECT statement of PROC METALIB allows to update only one table, but it is still updates the whole metadata ...
Many TIA
Cheers
Anne.

Re: Programmatically update ONLY ONE aspect of a table (e.g. a column length) with PROC METALIB (or

Kurt_Bremser — Mon, 15 May 2023 08:51:54 GMT

Updating all metadata makes perfect sense. Any difference between the physical dataset and its metadata entry will cause problems. Serious problems.

Re: Programmatically update ONLY ONE aspect of a table (e.g. a column length) with PROC METALIB (or

LinusH — Mon, 15 May 2023 09:31:12 GMT

Can you elaborate around the use case/scenario for this requirement?

As @Kurt_Bremser states, generally you want physical table structures match you metadata in the metadata server.

Changes are sometimes needed due to CR's and similar activities, but then you can probably do these updates manually (by a developer or administrator).