Proc Contents Full Library Description

[DavidPhillips2]

Is there a way in Enterprise Guide to View the metadata of a Library?  I'm to printout a list of tables in a library and then tables with column details.  Then I will compare that list with that of a similar library on another server.

[Astounding · Accepted solution]

If you are willing to write a program rather than point-and-click, you can use:

proc contents data=lib._all_;
run;

[DavidPhillips2]

I ran into a lot of errors like:

ERROR: File schemaname.tablename1.DATA does not exist.

Do I need to do something before I can run:

proc contents data=lib._all_;
run;

[Astounding]

Are you working with SAS data sets?

Do you have a LIBNAME statement in the program to refer to the folder that contains those data sets?

[DavidPhillips2]

libname demo meta library='Demo1';

proc contents data=demo. _all_;
run;

[Tom]

Assuming that you didn't actually include the space between the period and the _ALL_ then any errors you are getting is because of errors in the library that you connected to.  You probably need to contact your local SAS administrator see why you are getting errors using that library.

[data_null__]

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@Tom wrote:

Assuming that you didn't actually include the space between the period and the _ALL_ 

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The space does not cause syntax error.

35         proc contents data=work. _all_ noprint out=contents;
36            run;

NOTE: The data set WORK.CONTENTS has 47 observations and 41 variables.

[SASKiwi]

@DavidPhillips2  - I suspect that using PROC CONTENTS against a SAS library using the META engine will only work if the library has tables that are actually registered in SAS metadata - if it will work at all. There is also no guarantee that the registered table definition will match the actual table definition. So I guess it depends what you want to do here. Review the tables as stored on disk or how they are defined in SAS metadata.