Flagging if condition if ever met

[Tom]

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@SaSoDude wrote:

Thank you @Tom  - I can follow your explanation, but still have a different view on declaring IDs.

In this case the values of this ID take only numeric values and for this reason alone I see no advantage to declare the ID as a character.

I also know from other BI tools that especially with IDs numbers can be processed much faster than characters. Whether this is also the case in SAS, I do not know - I am still too new.

Best regards!

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As long as you understand the risks it is fine.  Why other databases work in a way that numeric identifiers work "faster" is something for them to address.  Perhaps it is because they allow variable length strings?  Other database also allow DECIMAL and INTEGER data types that allow for more possible unique identifiers and more compact storage than floating point numbers.