topic Re: How Do You Flowchart a SAS Program? in SAS Programming

How Do You Flowchart a SAS Program?

Sir_Highbury — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 13:05:47 GMT

Is possible to generate flow charts out of the SAS code?

Re: How Do You Flowchart a SAS Program?

AhmedAl_Attar — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 13:23:34 GMT

If you have SAS Enterprise Guide licensed and installed, you could try the 'Analyze for Program Flow' feature under the 'Program'-->'Analyze' menu options.

Hope this helps,

Ahmed

Re: How Do You Flowchart a SAS Program?

jklaverstijn — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 13:25:57 GMT

Have you had a look at proc SCAPROC? That analyzes ther logic of your code while it runs. SCAPROC is also implemented when importing code into a Data Integration Studio (DIS) job. The resulting flow is a kind of flowchart in its own right.

Using EG or DIS as an alternative to coding is something I highly recommended. It will keep your logic in plain sight besides many more perks for all those code afficionados out there.

Hope this helps,

- Jan.

Re: How Do You Flowchart a SAS Program?

RW9 — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 13:45:03 GMT

Hi,

So you don't plan/document your code before you start working on? To my mind > 90% of programming work involves planning, documenting, agreeing, and preparing validation plans and such like. Actual coding is less than 10% of a task. For instance, how would you go about validating a program, if your document it built from the program itself? Here is a link to something used in a lot of other programming fields, called Software Development Lifecyle. It goes through the stages of Planning, Documenting, Implementation, Testing, Lifecycle Management, and Retirement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle

Actual development is one step in a list of other steps, in my industry for instance we have to by regulation, specify what we will be doing before we start, to avoid bias, and also so that validation can independantly be done.

It does also make your life a lot easier in many respects - if you dealing with data transfers for instance, these can be defined and agreed up front - the code for importing that data is already written (other than some syntax) in that document.

Re: How Do You Flowchart a SAS Program?

ballardw — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 14:34:10 GMT

Perhaps the OP inherited something or is trying to understand some other code source.

Re: How Do You Flowchart a SAS Program?

Sir_Highbury — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 15:33:03 GMT

thanks Jan, I was not aware of it.

Re: How Do You Flowchart a SAS Program?

Sir_Highbury — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 15:35:58 GMT

The question was related to the potentiality of SAS: how Do You Flowchart a SAS Program? The scope was to know if SAS can do it or not.

So you don't plan/document your code before you start working on? That’s a too general question. It depends on the situation (e.g. complexity of the code, purpose of the analysis) anyway you can post it!

I actually do not write a flochart each time that I am using a program for some analysis (r, SAS, Phyton or whatever)