topic Re: proc sql question in SAS Programming

proc sql question

knveraraju91 — Thu, 10 May 2018 01:09:58 GMT

Dear,

Some body had written a proc sql code in a macro

porc sql;

select distinct
obs.*,

What is "obs.*". I know '*' means all. Does it mean all observations. Please suggest any example i can read. Thank you.

Re: proc sql question

SASKiwi — Thu, 10 May 2018 01:20:41 GMT

Where is the rest of your query? "obs" is a short way of identifying a table if your query looks like this:

proc sql;
  create table want as
  select obs.*
  from MyLongTableName as obs
  ;
quit;

So the query means select all columns from the table referenced by "obs". BTW "obs" has no special meaning. You can use any character or characters to reference the table: ABC, XYZ etc.

Re: proc sql question

PGStats — Thu, 10 May 2018 05:16:45 GMT

As @SASKiwi said, obs could be a table alias name or it could be the table name itself, as in the query:

proc sql;
select 
    obs.*,
    have.age
from obs, have
where obs.id=have.id;
quit;