SAS Technical Report P-258, Using the REPORT Procedure in a Nonwindowing Environment

[ssafmed]

Hello,

Where I can find SAS Technical Report P-258, Using the REPORT Procedure in a Nonwindowing Environment;

Thanks a lot

Best Regards

[data_null__]

Online book store? $4.98+Free shipping.

[ssafmed]

Thanks a lot! Can I buy electronic version somewhere?

Regards!

[Cynthia_sas · Accepted solution]

Hi:

  This posting is over 10 years old, but at some point in time, the old document was available as described here:

https://communities.sas.com/t5/ODS-and-Base-Reporting/P-258-Using-the-REPORT-Procedure-now-available...

  but the link in the posting is broken now. No doubt years of documentation re-orgs have changed the link.

  As I remember the current PROC REPORT documentation covers everything P-258 had, just organized differently.

  You might open a track with Tech Support if you REALLY want to find out whether the old document from the link in the posting is still available.

Cynthia

[ssafmed]

Thanks a lot!

[rocrum]

SAS Technical Report "P-258 - Using the REPORT Procedure in a Nonwindowing Environment, Release 6.07" can now be found again at: https://support.sas.com/documentation/onlinedoc/v82/techreport_p258.pdf

It has also been added as a Related Document on the Base SAS Documentation page at:

https://support.sas.com/en/software/base-sas-support.html#documentation

[ssafmed]

Hello rocrum,

Thanksa lot!

Best Regards;

ssaf

[Tom]

That is a really anachronistic manual.  When they first introduced PROC REPORT it was designed as interactive tool in Display Manager.  So they need that manual to help people understand how to use it as a normal programming tool.  Now that they are not really developing Display Manager the roles are reversed.  So perhaps there is a special manual for how to use PROC REPORT in an interactive way?

[Cynthia_sas]

Hi, Tom:

  Yes, it is an old manual and it doesn't cover ODS topics. However, the bulk of the "batch" proc report examples -- how ORDER works, how GROUP works, how BREAK and RBREAK works, how to do CALL DEFINE -- many of those examples are still good.

  Using PROC REPORT in interactive mode is only something that works in Display Manager or in an interactive SAS session on the mainframe or Unix. If you don't have Display Manager or an interactive session, the older instructions won't work. If you are using PROC REPORT with EG, you can't open the interactive REPORT window.

  It was our experience over the years, that people just weren't using PROC REPORT in the older REPORT window/interactive mode and so the PROC REPORT documentation changed to reflect the more common usage of submitting a complete PROC REPORT program. It used to be if you invoked PROC REPORT, that the interactive window was the default, and you needed the NOFS or NOWD option to submit your code in batch. However, even that changed over time and NOW the default is NOT to invoke the REPORT window at all.

  In Enterprise Guide, the EG developers added a List Report Wizard that creates basic PROC REPORT code, but unless you want the output from EG the way it is, when you go to modify the output, you either need to reference the documentation, or reference user group papers or reference the examples in P-258.

  We teach PROC REPORT syntax (along with TABULATE syntax) in the Report Writing 1 class and we also show how to use ODS and style overrides in the class.

  I think that P-258 can still be useful for beginners, as long as they understand that eventually, when they get beyond the basic syntax and examples and into using ODS, that they will need to explore the documentation and other resources. I asked for the P-258 documentation to be resurrected to avoid the broken link issue with this posting and the older posting that was referenced.

  If anyone wants to use PROC REPORT in a Display Manager or an interactive SAS session with the REPORT window, here's an older user group paper that gives the highlights: https://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings/proceedings/sugi28/070-28.pdf and this paper https://www.lexjansen.com/nesug/nesug90/NESUG90004.pdf by Ray Pass from 1990 is the very first paper that I remember reading when PROC REPORT and the interactive windowing mode was first available.

  It was a fun walk down memory lane for me looking at the papers -- that's how I first learned to use PROC REPORT.

Cynthia