proc sql error - table has zero rows

[gordononline]

Hi

I have a large SAS EG project that creates, reads and joins 12 tables from a variety of sources.  Occasionally one of the tables that is joined in the final SQL stage has zero rows, but normally all tables have at least one row.  When SAS SQL sees the table with zero rows it throws an error stating that tables must have more than zero rows - but I am unable to control for that with the basic input tables.

I'm thinking to insert a dummy row into the problematic table if there are zero rows, to allow for the project to run through to completion.  This would enable the join to occur without actually generating any additional rows of data.  

I have two questions that I would appreciate assistance with:

1. is there a better way to prevent this error?

2. how should i place a dummy row into a table (whether or not it has existing data)?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Doug

[SASKiwi]

Can you post the log of the offending step including source code, notes, warnings and errors please. As a general rule SAS should cope with zero rows without errors.