Thank you all for suggestions. I was able to resolve my problem this way: (I want to only select if a char var has "ab cdcdcd ef" appearing in any part of the string). proc sql; connect to db2 ; create table temp as select * from connnection to db2 (select x y z from Q where x like '%ab cdcdcd ef%' order by x); quit; ... View more

@SAS_user_n: You are trying to do something quite odd -- It seems that you are calculating the range of transaction dates just to select transactions whose date is between the two. Which is an unusually round about way of calculating the amount sub-totals by id. The only possible reason why you may be doing this is to exclude amounts whose date is missing. If this is the case, then I would do this directly as below. Better yet, you can use proc means/summary. Hope this helps. [pre] data one; input id tx am; cards; 1 1 10 1 2 20 1 . 30 2 3 40 2 4 50 2 5 60 ; run; /* proc sql */ proc sql; select id, sum(am) as totalAm from one where not missing(tx) group by id order by id; quit; /* id totalAm ------------------ 1 30 2 150 */ /* get sum of amounts by id */ proc sort data=one; by id; run; proc summary data=one; var am; by id; output out=stats(drop=_:) sum(am)=totalAm; where not missing(tx); run; /* check */ proc print data=stats noobs; run; /* on lst total id Am 1 30 2 150 */ [/pre] ... View more