Thanks, all! Very helpful.
Side note: to @Cynthia_sas Your comments about MONOTONIC() agree with my opinions about not using it, as I don't really grasp all the situations where trouble could arise. Nevertheless, I attended a talk by someone from SAS (I don't remember the person's name) on the subject of when to use a DATA step and when to use SQL, and in that talk, the use of MONOTONIC() was actually recommended. Seems like two different SAS employees are on opposite sides of this issue, and I would have thought that there would be some agreement at least among SAS employees about not using MONOTONIC().
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