SAS Enterprise Guide for Programmers: Webinar Follow-up

[ChrisHemedinger]

Links to the webinar recording, Q&A summary, and other related information are now available here:

http://support.sas.com/documentation/onlinedoc/guide/sasegforprogrammers.htm

Chris

[charles_s_patridge]

Chris,

I did view the webinar and had several questions which did not get answered.

1. I have written SAS programs that help document a SAS application - it reads all the variables from a SAS Library and then goes through all the SAS programs and finds their respective locations mentioned in the program and creates a SAS dataset that helps document the application as well as assists in troubleshooting the application when there are problems and/or questions.

Is there an easy way to read EGP files like it is when you have SAS programs filed in a directory? I really do not want to go into every project and then export the code to an external file just to document the application.

2. We are all knowledgeable about chaining a series of SAS programs using the "%INCLUDE" statements for running a group of SAS programs in BATCH. Is there a way to chain EGP projects in a similiar fashion? That is, we may have independent EGP projects that do a specific task / application but would like to chain a number of these tasks such that run all together in a sequencial manner AND in BATCH?

Thanks in advance,
Charles Patridge
Chares_S_Patridge at prodigy dot net

[RichardH_sas]

Hi Charles,

A few thoughts from me; Chris may have more to add.

1. An EG project is actually a ZIP file underneath it all. You could extract the underlying code by renaming the file with a .zip extension (I'd probably create a backup copy first!), unzipping it, then accessing the code in separate folders. I don't know if this is more automated than doing an Export all code manually. More details on the zip file details here: http://support.sas.com/kb/18/414.html

2. I don't know of a specific way to chain multiple projects together. You can always create code templates from the tasks in question, save the code files, and then use %include on the code. You can also create multiple process flows and ordered lists as a way within a single project to easily control what executes. Usually, %include statements are used to either submit code at the beginning of using SAS or to bring in a specific chunk of pre-written code when needed. You can tackle the "code at the beginning" part in EG 4.2 by using Tools / Options / SAS Programs / Submit SAS code when server is connected. Bringing in a specific chunk or pre-written code can be applied to tasks as previously mentioned by creating code templates from those and saving the code.