topic Re: Difference between in inobs and outobs in SAS Programming

Difference between in inobs and outobs

priyankachauhan — Sun, 10 Dec 2017 12:24:45 GMT

inobs and outobs showing the same no. of rows in the table. so what is the difference between them?

Re: Difference between in inobs and outobs

Shmuel — Sun, 10 Dec 2017 12:59:03 GMT

in some cases you may want to split observations - e.g write out per date in a range of dates.

in other case you may want to filter your input and select output according to some rules.

in both cases inobs will differ from outobs.

Re: Difference between in inobs and outobs

novinosrin — Sun, 10 Dec 2017 18:50:26 GMT

Hi @priyankachauhan, @Shmuel is very kind enough to explain how it works. I am sure, you may or may not understand a lot of concepts if you are a beginner. I found it very hard when i was a beginner 5 years ago. I suggest you to get a copy of this amazing book which has everything that you want and more-

PROC SQL: Beyond the Basics Using SAS®, Second Edition

Kirk Paul Lafler

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Publisher: SAS Institute

Re: Difference between in inobs and outobs

Reeza — Sun, 10 Dec 2017 19:03:38 GMT

In the simplest cases they are the same. But as soon as you complicate things they are not.

They do what it sounds like it does, one controls how many records are read, InOBS) and one controls how many records are output. Since the number of records read obviously affects the outcome they are very different.
Here's an example of the exact same code and INOBS=2 and OUTOBS=2 in each run. Check the output.

title 'OutObs demo';
proc sql outobs=2;
select age, count(*)
from sashelp.class
group by age
order by age desc;
;
quit;


title 'InObs demo';
proc sql inobs=5;
select age, count(*)
from sashelp.class
group by age
order by age desc;
;
quit;

Results: