Audience

This course is designed for students who have experience with SAS and want to enrich their SAS skills and improve the efficiency of their SAS programs.

Duration

1 day

Abstract

This course will cover how SAS processes large data files and will show several techniques for improving a SAS program. Emphasis will be on the DATA step, with a brief look at improving the use of several SAS PROCS.

Objectives

• Understand how to measure “efficiency”
• Understand how the data step handles data, both input and output
• Learn how to alter SAS column attributes as needed for correctness and efficiency
• Practice techniques for reducing the amount of data SAS has to process
• Learn to use SAS programming logic in an efficient manner and understand
• Why some programs are less efficient than others
• Review using FORMAT statements effectively
• Understand when, how, and why to sort or index SAS data files
• Discuss storage of compiled DATA step source code
• Utilize WHERE statements to maximize coding efficiency
• Understand when to use SAS VIEWS and PROC SQL
• Know how and when to use data compression

Outline

• Measuring efficiency
• Inner workings of the DATA step
• Efficient data types and sizes
• Reducing rows and columns
• Reading external flat files
• Using SAS statements for efficient code
• Sorting and indexing data
• Documenting SAS programs
• Using SAS data views
• Compressing data files
• Putting together more efficient large SAS programs