topic Re: Converting Focus programs to SAS in ODS and Base Reporting

Converting Focus programs to SAS

deleted_user — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 12:43:12 GMT

Dear All,

Is there any tool to convert FOCUS programs to SAS programs?

Thanks
Narayana KR

Re: Converting Focus programs to SAS

Cynthia_sas — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:38:39 GMT

Hi:
I don't know of any conversion tools, however, some of my students in the Report Writing class have told me that PROC REPORT, PROC SQL and a bit of PROC TABULATE (for a lot of nested dimensions) are what they use to duplicate/reproduce their Focus reports.

cynthia

Re: Converting Focus programs to SAS

boschy — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:12:00 GMT

I was once hired to evaluate the feasibility of doing this on a large scale.

There no easy way to do it. One tricky aspect is the FOCUS JOIN syntax and JOIN options, which to me are counter-intuitive and difficult to convert to an SQL-style query. This is especially true if DB column and table names have been converted to shorter 'legacy' aliases in the masterfile definitions. Shudder.

The bottom line is that every step must be tested very carefully. Estimate with generous fudge factors. Good luck...better you then me!

-Rod

Message was edited by: boschy