Scott is 100% right with regard to sound practice. With so many SAS reporting procedures that let you order columns as needed, there is really no reason to need this. However, an audience raised in Excel is an audience that is accustomed to moving columns around. Thus, I can see where this issue originates.
Base SAS VIEWTABLE, and SAS Enterprise Guide give a default view of the data. In some cases, I can see why people might want the most interesting variables "at the left". I've been known to force an ATTRIB statement before the SET statement so that "my favorites" come up on the left in a new view.
But for the most part I agree with Scott.
data test / view=test;
attrib age label='Age' weight label='Weight' sex label='Sex' height label='Height' name label='Name';
set sashelp.class;
run;
If you now click on WORK.TEST in the explorer, the data will appear in the order listed on the ATTRIB statement. But really, other ways are better.
... View more