topic Number of Columns in a Dataset in SAS Programming

Number of Columns in a Dataset

ShufeGuoding — Sat, 02 Mar 2019 09:43:35 GMT

How many variables can we have in a sas dataset?

Re: Number of Columns in a Dataset

Kurt_Bremser — Sat, 02 Mar 2019 09:44:53 GMT

Apply Maxim 6 and do a google search for "sas maximum number of columns in dataset".

For all practical purposes, the answer is "unlimited". But your question points to a problem in data design; you never should contemplate a structure that makes you ask this question.

In all my time running a major insurance company's data warehouse, I never had the need to go beyond a few hundred columns. And those were rare exceptions when preparing data with lots of boolean variables for regression analysis.

Re: Number of Columns in a Dataset

Satish_Parida — Sat, 02 Mar 2019 09:44:18 GMT

See the following Link
https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Enterprise-Guide/Recommended-maximum-number-of-variables-for-data-set-in-EG/td-p/5133

Check the 1st answer, you can test out the number of maximum variables possible.

But the concern will be hitting the memory, while accessing or writing into the data set or simply storing it.

Re: Number of Columns in a Dataset

Kurt_Bremser — Sat, 02 Mar 2019 09:46:19 GMT

And use more descriptive subject lines, so we don't have to do that for you.

"data set" is NOT descriptive, by far.