Some other issues you might want to know about ... As a general rule, it is extremely time-consuming for SAS to retrieve an entire data set in sorted order by using an index.  Indexes are better suited for retrieving a small subset, rather than retrieving an entire data set. When you sort a data set, SAS stores the sorted order.  You can see that at the end of a PROC CONTENTS report.  So if you were to run the exact same PROC SORT twice, SAS is smart enough to skip running the second one.  There is also a SORTEDBY= data set option, which tells SAS that the data set is in order when it is created in some other way other than by PROC SORT.  That has its complications, however, so don't use it blindly. Changing a data set destroys the index.  But in many cases, changing a data set preserves the sorted order of the observations so that future sorting may not be needed. So there are other differences, but are they "main differences"?  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. ... View more

The SAS Report output from each task/program represents the ODS results (in SAS Report format) from those tasks.  Then you use the SAS Report Builder (File->New Report) to select elements of those results, and assemble them into a composite report that you can further arrange and annotate. So yes, these SAS Report icons you're pointing to are a necessary intermediate step to building the composite report.  Think of the composite report as the recipe, and the individual task outputs as the ingredients... Chris ... View more