You may want to show some sample data and sample output.  I'm guessing you want something like: data have;   input entity_id $4. datecol1 ddmmyy8.;   format datecol1 mmddyy8.;   datalines; 1234 010111 1234 010111 1234 010111 1234 030111 1235 020111 1235 020111 1235 030111 1235 040111   ; run; proc sql;   select distinct entity_id, datecol1 from have; quit; Output would be: entity_id  datecol1   ---------       ----------   1234       01/01/11   1234       01/03/11   1235       01/02/11   1235       01/03/11   1235       01/04/11                                                ... View more

I can see why one would want to do it - in some industries rather complete libraries of code exist that allow them to produce work faster than their competitors. Sometimes, there is lots of turnover too, between the competing companies, and a crafty individual might try and walk off with the code and become a hotshot at a competitor. ... View more

I'm fairly certain with a little tweaking, you could make the "key" idea a bit more robust. I hope it was sufficient to give an idea of how it could work. The PWENCODE procedure seems to only work for passwords, not entire program files. Your Oracle obfuscation tookit idea looks like it could work, albeit with a bit of pl/sql coding that is out of my league - but it's a great idea if you don't mind storing the code in an Oracle table. ... View more

Hi, I took a stab at this.  It's rudimentary, but hopefully it's enough to get you going. It reads a SAS program one line at a time, and converts each character using a "key" which can be changed to your liking. It then writes each character out to an output file (obfuscated, if you will). You can call the same macro with an inverse (?) of the key to un-obfuscate it to another output file. filename testfile '/<some path>/<some original program>.sas'; filename fileout1 '/<some path>/<some obfuscated program>.sas'; filename fileout2 '/<some path>/<un-obfuscated program>.sas'; %macro obfuscate(key=,filein=testfile, fileout=fileout1); data garble1;     infile &filein truncover length=linesize;     file &fileout ;     length record $80. asc_char_in varylen key 8.;     varylen=80;     key = &key; ;     input record $varying. varylen;     do i = 1 to linesize;       asc_char_in=rank(substr(record,i,1));       char_out= byte(asc_char_in + key);       put char_out $1. @;     end;     put; run; %mend; %obfuscate(key=_n_+7); %obfuscate(key=0-(_n_+7), filein=fileout1, fileout=fileout2); ... View more

Beat me to it...and that code is definitely slick and concise.  If it is too slick:   data want;     set have;     array sumz {10};     retain sumz rowcnt 0;     rowcnt +1;     sumz{rowcnt}=count;     if _n_ >=10 then do;       tendaycount=sum(of sumz1-sumz10);       if _n_ in (10,20,30)then rowcnt=0;     end;     keep date1 count tendaycount; run; ... View more

Those Art Carpenter papers are priceless. Evil, but priceless. I especially like the section about using (obvious) variable names for anything other than what they look like (WEIGHT = height of the patient.) ... View more

(over)use of complex and/or nested SQL statements can go a long way to obfuscate what's happening - especially if your trying to obfuscate programs from SAS programmers who may not be as technically sound with SQL. ... View more

It's syntax errors like this that I waste HOURS on ! Lol. ... View more

Firstly, thanks to everyone for the great ideas. I went with an approach similar to darrylovia's idea, just without the temp table. I got the number of sequence values I would need to insert (numobs) and created a temp dataset with those values. I added a rownum column that is just a sequential number starting at 1 and going to numobs. I added that same rownum column to my transaction data so I could merge the Oracle Sequence values with the transactions... I still want to try Chuck's approach...if I get time !! ** loop from 1 to number of sequence values I need. **; %if &numobs > 0 %then %do; %do i = 1 %to &numobs; proc sql; connect to oracle as connect1 ( user = &username password = &password path = "&db" ); ** get an Oracle sequence value **; create table seq as select * from connection to connect1 ( select my_sequence_object.nextval as seqval from dual ); quit; ** append the Oracle sequence value to a dataset. **; data vseqs; length rownum 8.; set vseqs seq; rownum=_n_; run; %end; %end; **Then merge by rownum **; ... View more

But does Proc SQL allow me to select the transaction data from a SAS dataset and at the same time access the Oracle connection to select values from the Oracle sequence object? I didn't think something like the following is allowed (or I can't seem to make it work): insert into oraclelib.my_oracle_table (select seq.nextval, col1, col2, from unixlib.my_sas_dataset where x=y); ... View more