I suggest you raise this as a Tech Support issue and ask them to escalate this suggestion back to the developers. If enough people do this then it will make the official SASWARE ballot. I have been using SAS long enough to remember when SAS names and tables were expanded from 8 to 32 characters long. User demand was a key driver for this. In the meantime a quick fix might be to create a SAS dataset list of the longer than 32 character database tables, with a corresponding 32 character SAS name and then create a SAS macro to automatically generate valid SAS SQL views of the database tables from the SAS dataset list. ... View more

Oops 2, my SQL got chopped. Oops, forgot the GROUP BY I would be tempted to pre-process the data first converting your date to a SAS date, creating two new dates to use with the summing, then use SQL like so: data new; set old; sas_date = mdy(scan(date,1,'-'), scan(date,2,'-'), 2010); start_date = sas_date + 1; end_date = sas_date + 20; run; proc sql; create data new2 as select n1.sas_date ,sum(n2.value) from new as n1, new as n2 where n1.start_date ge n2.sas_date and n1.end_date le n2.sas_date group by n1.sas_date Message was edited by: SASKiwi Message was edited by: SASKiwi ... View more

No problem! What is interesting when you run tagset V1.94 in SAS 9.2 is you get a message in the SASLOG saying the tagset is compatible with SAS 9.1.3 and above. To my knowledge this version has not been released as a 9.1.3 upgrade even though it says it will work! Is anyone able to shed any light on this? ... View more

Oops, forgot the GROUP BY I would be tempted to pre-process the data first converting your date to a SAS date, creating two new dates to use with the summing, then use SQL like so: data new; set old; sas_date = mdy(scan(date,1,'-'), scan(date,2,'-'), 2010); start_date = sas_date + 1; end_date = sas_date + 20; run; proc sql; create data new2 as select n1.sas_date ,sum(n2.value) from new as n1, new as n2 where n1.start_date >= n2.sas_date and n1.end_date group by n1.sas_date ... View more

I would be tempted to pre-process the data first converting your date to a SAS date, creating two new dates to use with the summing, then use SQL like so: data new; set old; sas_date = mdy(scan(date,1,'-'), scan(date,2,'-'), 2010); start_date = sas_date + 1; end_date = sas_date + 20; run; proc sql; create data new2 as select n1.sas_date ,sum(n2.value) from new as n1, new as n2 where n1.start_date >= n2.sas_date and n1.end_date <= n2.sas_date group by n1.sas_date ; quit; ... View more

For peoples benefit the test program above works fine in SAS 9.2 and tagset V1.94. ... View more

The equivalant DATA step logic is: data st.Def_2008; set st.Def_2008; if ResultType=77 then delete; run; The advantage of the DATA step is you can do a lot more in the same step with only one pass of the data than you can in SQL, for example create more than one output dataset containing different results. ... View more

I think it is not a case of one being better than the other but what is most appropriate for your situation. For example, we use passthru for our large Oracle Production jobs as it is easier to fine-tune, add Oracle hints for better performance and to get support from Oracle DBA's if things go wrong (you can drop the query into SQL Plus, TOAD or some other SQL tool and it will just work). But for ad-hoc work and user jobs SAS SQL is simpler and more productive. ... View more

Your task is far easier to do in a DATA step because you can process one row at a time and accumulate results as you go. This technique is impossible in simple SQL because it does not process row by row. An SQL solution would require multiple queries and probably joining as well. Why not just use the easy DATA step way?! ... View more

Try this: data average; set xxx; total + value; average = total/_n_; run; ... View more

Your code is syntactically incorrect. In the SAS editor the line: VAR VAR1; will be coloured red because it is not valid. Also did you check your SAS log after running this step as it will highlight this statement with an error 180 - this statement is not valid. Remove the incorrect statement and you will find it works fine. You need to check your SAS log every time you run a program to confirm if it ran without error or not. This is even more important when you are just starting out learning SAS. SAS log messages are usually very good at highlighting errors and problems. Good luck! ... View more

I can easily reproduce this error with the following test program (using SAS 9.1.3 and tagset V1.86): ods tagsets.excelxp file = "test.xls" style = normal options (SHEET_NAME = 'Test' DEFAULT_COLUMN_WIDTH = '16' EMBEDDED_TITLES = 'NO' SHEET_INTERVAL = 'NONE') ; proc report data = sashelp.class nowindows; define name / display format = $16. 'Name' ; define age / display format = 6. 'Age' ; column name age; run; proc report data = sashelp.class nowindows; define name / display format = $16. 'Name' ; define age / display format = 6. 'Age' ; define height / display format = 6. 'Height' style=[cellwidth=90pt]; column name age height; run; ods _all_ close; ods listing; The error is caused by trying to do a STYLE customisation on a column that is not in the the first table and both tables are being written to the same worksheet. Could this be the same issue for you? It appears that at least this tagset does not handle STYLE customisations outside of the range created by the first table in the sheet. If you don't customise it works fine. ... View more

To expand on Barry's answer, SAS is not architected in the same way that a simple compile and execute computer language is (eg BASIC, C etc). For example, consider SAS's library of procedures (PROC xxx). There are hundreds of these and each is a bunch of executables in its own right. The idea of packaging these up is mind-boggling! BTW, this used to be a frequent question when I did SAS tech support many moons ago! However with SAS's thin client tools (Enterprise Guide, Web Report Studio etc) you can run SAS jobs without SAS installed as long as you have access to a SAS server. ... View more

If you look at the properties of one of the blue coloured files in Windows Explorer (right-click properties, then click the Advanced option) you will see that the Compress contents check box is ticked. This is something you can do yourself file by file, but more typically at directory or drive level to compress files to save space. With large SAS datasets you can compress them up to half their original size as well as improving I/O performance. We have been able to delay a major disk upgrade by using this Windows option (on top of SAS compression). ... View more

Try this test: LIBNAME WrkBk EXCEL "My Workbook.xls" VER=2000; DATA WrkBk.class; SET sashelp.class; RUN; LIBNAME WrkBk CLEAR; LIBNAME WrkBk EXCEL "My Workbook.xls" SCAN_TEXT=NO; PROC APPEND BASE=WrkBk.class DATA=sashelp.class; RUN; LIBNAME WrkBk CLEAR; ... View more