difference

[dash]

Hi all,
Can anybody tell me the difference between pass through facility and libname access method, proc report and proc tabulate. I am unabke to differentiate
Thanks in advance

[LinusH]

There are tons of papers and documentations on both these issues. The best way to figure out what to use is learning by doing.

Short: if you need for some reason (or are more familiar with) native RDBMS syntax, you need to use explicit pass thru. Libname access (implicit pass-thru) would work for most scenarios, and lets you be more flexible in what data source you are using.

For standard cross tabular reports TABULATE would be a normal choice. If you need more customization with layout, calculated values, conditional processing etc, REPORT is the tool.

/Linus

[Doc_Duke]

In addition to Linus's comments, I'd add that the SAS/Access for Relational Databases document has several hundred pages of detailed information on those two methods.

One major note, in using the (explicit) pass-through, you must write your SQL code in the syntax of the target database. In LIBNAME access to RDMS, you use SAS/SQL syntax and SAS does the translation. SAS also makes the decision as to whether to pass-thru to the DBMS or to bring the tables to the SAS server.

[Ksharp]

In addition to Linus's comments, I'd add that the SAS/Access for Relational Databases document has several hundred pages of detailed information on those two methods. 🙂

The most differernt with these is : Libname statement is only accept Standard SQL , but Pass thru can accept all the expansion about SQL(that means you can use tremendous SAS's functions and other facility), Libname has more efficient than Pass thru,So I recommend to use Libname especially for very large table.

About proc tabulate and proc report, proc tabulate 's best advantage is to generate lots of summary statistical estimator for lots of variable,proc report 's best advantage is to beautifully build report and have more control to report.


Ksharp