How to use your own functions in Data Management Studio

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Data Management Platform is a powerful tool for data cleansing and data integration applications. In Data Management Studio, you can use the Data Job Expression node to run a scripting language to process your data sets in ways that are not built by default. The Expression Engine Language (EEL) provides many statements, functions, and variables for manipulating data.

Note: Expression Language Reference Guide is accessible from SAS Support website.

The Expression Engine Language can be used to code inside a Data Job, but can also be used to write your own functions that can then be saved outside of your jobs, and called from any of them.

For example, let's say you need to mesure a distance between strings and need to use a Jaro-Winckler distance.

First step is to create a text file inside your Data Management Studio etc/udf folder. This file will contain your code, and can be named anything you like. In each text file, you can write as many functions as you like, in that format:

function myFunctionName return returnType
//function body
end function

In Data Management Studio, anything defined in a text file saved in /etc/udf folder as a function will appear under Expression Node Functions riser, in the Other group:

You can then call this function from any of your new Data Jobs:

If these functions are to be called from a job running on Data Management Server, udf files just need to be copied to the same location on the server side.