SAS DATA Step

The DATA step is your primary tool for reading and processing data in the SAS System. The DATA step provides a powerful general purpose programming language that enables you to perform all kinds of data processing tasks. The DATA step is documented in SAS Language: Reference.

Base SAS Procedures

Base SAS software includes many useful SAS procedures. Base SAS procedures are documented in the SAS Procedures Guide. The following is a list of Base SAS procedures you might find useful:

CATALOG

for managing SAS catalogs

CHART

for printing charts and histograms

COMPARE

for comparing SAS data sets

CONTENTS

for displaying the contents of SAS data sets

COPY

for copying SAS data sets

CORR

for computing correlations

CPORT

for moving SAS data libraries between computer systems

DATASETS

for deleting or renaming SAS data sets

FREQ

for computing frequency crosstabulations

MEANS

for computing descriptive statistics and summarizing or collapsing data over cross sections

PLOT

for printing scatter plots

PRINT

for printing SAS data sets

RANK

for computing rankings or order statistics

SORT

for sorting SAS data sets

SQL

for processing SAS data sets with structured query language

STANDARD

for standardizing variables to a fixed mean and variance

TABULATE

for printing descriptive statistics in tabular format

TIMEPLOT

for plotting variables over time

TRANSPOSE

for transposing SAS data sets

UNIVARIATE

for computing descriptive statistics

Global Statements

Global statements can be specified anywhere in your SAS program, and they remain in effect until changed. Global statements are documented in SAS Language: Reference. You might find the following SAS global statements useful:

FILENAME

for accessing data files

FOOTNOTE

for printing footnote lines at the bottom of each page

%INCLUDE

for including files of SAS statements

LIBNAME

for accessing SAS data libraries

OPTIONS

for setting various SAS system options

RUN

for executing the preceding SAS statements

TITLE

for printing title lines at the top of each page

X

for issuing host operating system commands from within your SAS session

Some Base SAS statements can be used with any SAS procedure, including SAS High-Performance Forecasting procedures. These statements are not global, and they affect only the SAS procedure they are used with. These statements are documented in SAS Language: Reference.

The following Base SAS statements are useful with SAS High-Performance Forecasting procedures:

BY

for computing separate analyses for groups of observations

FORMAT

for assigning formats to variables

LABEL

for assigning descriptive labels to variables

WHERE

for subsetting data to restrict the range of data processed or to select or exclude observations from the analysis

SAS Functions

SAS functions can be used in DATA step programs and in the COMPUTAB and MODEL procedures. The following kinds of functions are available:

• character functions, for manipulating character strings

• date and time functions, for performing date and calendar calculations

• financial functions, for performing financial calculations such as depreciation, net present value, periodic savings, and internal rate of return

• lagging and differencing functions, for computing lags and differences

• mathematical functions, for computing data transformations and other mathematical calculations

• probability functions, for computing quantiles of statistical distributions and the significance of test statistics

• random number functions, for simulation experiments

• sample statistics functions, for computing means, standard deviations, kurtosis, and so on

Formats, Informats, and Time Intervals

Base SAS software provides formats to control the printing of data values, informats to read data values, and time intervals to define the frequency of time series.