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
Prerequisites
A working knowledge of the fundamentals of SAS is required. A course such as “Introduction to SAS” or equivalent experience is needed.
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
