1. SAS and its Rukes

1.1 WHAT IS SAS?

Originally SAS was an abbreviation for Statistical Analysis System, now SAS stands on its own.

Useful for the following types of task:

•  Data entry, retrieval, and management
•  Report writing and graphics
•  Statistical and mathematical analysis

1.2 UNDERSTANDING TERMS IN A SAS DATA STRUCTURE

•  DATA VALUE: The basic unit of information.
•  VARIABLE or COLUMN: A set of data values that describes a given attribute. 2 main types of variable

types: numeric and character

•  OBSERVATION or ROW: All the data values associated with a particular record.
•  DATA SET or TABLE: It is a collection of observation.

1.3 RULES FOR SAS NAMES

•  SAS variable/variable names must be between 1 and 32 characters long.
•  The first character must be a letter or an underscore.
•  Characters after the first may be letters, digits or underscores.

 Example: NAME, _NAME_, FILE1, _NULL_ etc.

1.4 RULES FOR SAS STATEMENTS

•  SAS statements may begin in any column of the line.
•  SAS statements end with a semicolon (;).
•  Some SAS statements consist of more than one line of commands.
•  A SAS statement may continue over more than one line.

One or more blanks should be placed between items in SAS statements. If the items are special characters such as '=', '+', '$', the blanks are not necessary.

There are two major building blocks in SAS.

•  DATA Step
•  PROC Step