what is available in 2014

[HeatherNewton]

Hi All,

I am new to SAS. I recently found a job where I need to review SAS programs written around  8 or 9 years ago.  I wonder which part of SAS I should learn to be proficient in reviewing these programs. What kind of SAS tools/libraries were popular back then for big data manipulation, building data warehouse or creating data analytics in a corporate setting... 

[andreas_lds]

Start by attending to the various courses teaching sas code. You can find an overview at https://support.sas.com/training/us/paths/prg.html

[Kurt_Bremser]

Since 9.2 already had the same basic architecture as 9.4 (metadata server!), and SAS rarely, if ever, drops capabilities from tools, your current SAS knowledge will suffice to understand 10 year old codes.

[SASKiwi]

Start by reviewing the logs of these SAS programs. Are they filled with warnings or notes about calculations creating missing values? Are they slow and unreliable? If so the original coder did not do their job properly. These are the programs that need improvement, not just because they were written 6 or 7 years ago.

If on the other hand the logs are clean of such issues and continue to run efficiently and produce the correct results, then why do you need to fix something that isn't broken? I've got plenty of programs that were written that long ago but continue to run efficiently, effectively and cleanly. I won't be reviewing them any time soon as they are still fit for purpose.

[HeatherNewton]

Got it thank you for your help.

I need to review as to know what exactly is being written and performed. We are moving data created from these sas programs from an old data warehouse to new platform IBM datastage. And no one knows all details about these programs so the solution is to read it line by line to figure out and then document it such that developer can use to build new data pipeline.   

[Kurt_Bremser]

If you're new to SAS, you will need to learn the language; depending on the complexity of the existing codes and the SAS elements used in there, this might well be a very daunting task (SAS provides probably 10 times as much capabilities than even the most capable and experienced of the super users here even knows).

Read the codes, study the documentation for the elements that you do not "get" completely, and do not be afraid to come back here when you have trouble with a certain code piece.

If I read you right, your organization is planning to move away from SAS; given the power of SAS, this could end up to be Sysiphus's work.

[HeatherNewton]

Thank you for your advice. One more questions, I know you can use other languages in sas programs eg java, C, R..

Under what circumstances do you add other languages.. some function SAS dont have? for convenience?

I saw at the end of a sas program, the last line starts with

"If compressed..."

so it does not look like sas.. what could it be..

[SASKiwi]

"I saw at the end of a sas program, the last line starts with

"If compressed..."

so it does not look like sas.. what could it be.."

If it starts with * and ends with ; or starts with /* and ends with */ then it's a comment. You need to post the whole step not just a bit of the last line to have a better chance of figuring out what it does.

[SASKiwi]

OK so you are converting the SAS processes into IBM Datastage? That's interesting. I used Datastage back in the late 1990's. It has a pretty long history but not as long as SAS...