topic Re: Table prompt in SAS Enterprise Guide

Table prompt

Max-A — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 13:11:18 GMT

Hello Everyone,

I've been doing some research to find a way to create a automatic test procedure to check if there are double values in a dataset. I think it must be possible to show a prompt on startup to select the dataset that has to be checked. Correct me if i am wrong.

The problems i encouter are the following:

- I cannot find a way to specify a specific dataset with a prompt. Only a file or directory. But the file is not on the etl server, and so i cannot use it.

- I want to create a testprogram in which a lot of values can be changed. For example:

What variable must be unique? (test 1)

What variable cannot be empty? (test 2)

I am quite new to the sas software, so i hope someone can help me.

Looking forward to the reactions!

Re: Table prompt

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 13:30:25 GMT

You can define a user prompt as selection from a dynamic list, where the values are taken from a dataset.

create an empty table that will hold the dataset names
register it in metadata
use it as source for the prompt

For the finding of double values, proc freq could be very helpful.

Re: Table prompt

Max-A — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 13:44:35 GMT

Thanks for your reply!

The problem that i am dealing with is that there are probably over thousand datasets, and every dataset has its own user permissions.

I was hoping that it was possible to search for the specific location of the dataset that i want to check.

The selected dataset would than be the first step of the process flow. After that it must be the source of the list data/query builder or one of the other data tasks.

Hope you have an idea to tackle this problem.

Re: Table prompt

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 13:50:26 GMT

What you describe now is functionality that's already there in Enterprise Guide or SAS Studio.

Re: Table prompt

Reeza — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 14:58:44 GMT

@Max-A wrote:

Thanks for your reply!

The problem that i am dealing with is that there are probably over thousand datasets, and every dataset has its own user permissions.

I was hoping that it was possible to search for the specific location of the dataset that i want to check.

The selected dataset would than be the first step of the process flow. After that it must be the source of the list data/query builder or one of the other data tasks.

Hope you have an idea to tackle this problem.

Are you saying you can't register the table in the metadata library?

Or you want a simpler way?

Why not make it free text so the user enters the name and add a step to verify its a valid table and if not, then it doesn't run.

EDIT: or expand on @Kurt_Bremser idea and add whatever groups/tags you want to the table to organize the data and then add a cascading prompt so the user can find it using the groups/tags you've set up.

Re: Table prompt

Max-A — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 14:38:18 GMT

I think this is more or less the thing i am looking for.

So this is what i have done:

1. i made a prompt in which the user can specify the location and name of a sas table

2. i made a program with the prompt to start the project

3. I think the only thing i have to do now is to create a prompt that gives a list of the possible variables of the table that is the result of the prompt in step 1.

Hope it is possible to create a computed column based on the answer that has been given to a prompt.

What i am wondering is if it is possible to refresh the values of the prompt every time the first step runs

Re: Table prompt

Reeza — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 14:38:33 GMT

@Max-A wrote:

I think this is more or less the thing i am looking for.

So this is what i have done:

1. i made a prompt in which the user can specify the location and name of a sas table

2. i made a program with the prompt to start the project

3. I think the only thing i have to do now is to create a prompt that gives a list of the possible variables of the table that is the result of the prompt in step 1.

Hope it is possible to create a computed column based on the answer that has been given to a prompt

You can create that list relatively easily, use dictionary.vcolumn to pull all the variable names from a table. Probably need to create a view or something that lists it and then set that as the prompt parameter.

Re: Table prompt

Kurt_Bremser — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 15:18:05 GMT

You need to populate a dataset, which is already registered in metadata, with the variable names from dictionary.columns (or sashelp.vcolumn). You can build a dynamic prompt from that.