Overview

Most of the SAS Clinical Standards Toolkit global macro variables that are provided by SAS are defined in properties files in the form of name and value pairs. Here is an example:
_cstDebug=0
Each registered standard, including CST-Framework, has an initialize.properties file. This file specifies global macro variables that are required by the standard and are available for use in any SAS Clinical Standards Toolkit process that references the standard. Each registered standard might have an action-related properties file that specifies global macro variables that are needed for processes that perform the action. An example of this type of action-related properties file is validation.properties.
A properties file is processed in one of two ways:
  1. A direct call is made to the SAS Clinical Standards Toolkit utility macro %CST_SETSTANDARDPROPERTIES in a code module, such as a driver program like validate_data.sas. The %CST_SETSTANDARDPROPERTIES macro calls cst_setproperties.
  2. The file is included in the SASReferences data set (with type=properties), in which the %CSTUTIL_ALLOCATESASREFERENCES macro calls the %CST_SETPROPERTIES macro.
Global macro variables can be deleted at the end of a process if the SAS Clinical Standards Toolkit utility macro %CSTUTIL_CLEANUPCSTSESSION is called with the _cstDeleteGlobalMacroVars parameter set to 1.