Choosing the Right Procedure

Brief Descriptions of Base SAS Procedures

APPEND procedure: adds observations from one SAS data set to the end of another SAS data set.
BMDP procedure: invokes a BMDP program to analyze data in a SAS data set. See the SAS documentation for your operating environment for more information.
CALENDAR procedure: displays data from a SAS data set in a monthly calendar format. PROC CALENDAR can display holidays in the month, schedule tasks, and process data for multiple calendars with work schedules that vary.
CATALOG procedure: manages entries in SAS catalogs. PROC CATALOG is an interactive, non-windowing procedure that enables you to display the contents of a catalog; copy an entire catalog or specific entries in a catalog; and rename, exchange, or delete entries in a catalog.
CHART procedure: produces vertical and horizontal bar charts, block charts, pie charts, and star charts. These charts provide a quick visual representation of the values of a single variable or several variables. PROC CHART can also display a statistic associated with the values.
CIMPORT procedure: restores a transport file created by the CPORT procedure to its original form (a SAS library, catalog, or data set) in the format appropriate to the operating environment. Coupled with the CPORT procedure, PROC CIMPORT enables you to move SAS libraries, catalogs, and data sets from one operating environment to another.
COMPARE procedure: compares the contents of two SAS data sets. You can also use PROC COMPARE to compare the values of different variables within a single data set. PROC COMPARE produces a variety of reports on the comparisons that it performs.
CONTENTS procedure: prints descriptions of the contents of one or more files in a SAS library.
CONVERT procedure: converts BMDP system files, OSIRIS system files, and SPSS portable files to SAS data sets. See the SAS documentation for your operating environment for more information.
COPY procedure: copies an entire SAS library or specific members of the library. You can limit processing to specific types of library members.
CORR procedure: computes Pearson product-moment and weighted product-moment correlation coefficients between variables and descriptive statistics for these variables. In addition, PROC CORR can compute three nonparametric measures of association (Spearman's rank-order correlation, Kendall's tau-b, and Hoeffding's measure of dependence, D), partial correlations (Pearson's partial correlation, Spearman's partial rank-order correlation, and Kendall's partial tau-b), and Cronbach's coefficient alpha.
CPORT procedure: writes SAS libraries, data sets, and catalogs in a special format called a transport file. Coupled with the CIMPORT procedure, PROC CPORT enables you to move SAS libraries, data sets, and catalogs from one operating environment to another.
CV2VIEW procedure: converts SAS/ACCESS view descriptors to PROC SQL views. Starting in SAS System 9, conversion of SAS/ACCESS view descriptors to PROC SQL views is recommended because PROC SQL views are platform-independent and enable you to use the LIBNAME statement. See the SAS/ACCESS for Relational Databases: Reference for details.
DATASETS procedure: lists, copies, renames, and deletes SAS files and SAS generation groups; manages indexes; and appends SAS data sets in a SAS library. The procedure provides all the capabilities of the APPEND, CONTENTS, and COPY procedures. You can also modify variables within data sets; manage data set attributes, such as labels and passwords; or create and delete integrity constraints.
DBCSTAB procedure: produces conversion tables for the double-byte character sets that SAS supports. See the SAS National Language Support (NLS): Reference Guide for details.
DISPLAY procedure: executes SAS/AF applications. See the SAS Guide to Applications Development for information on building SAS/AF applications.
DOCUMENT procedure: manipulates procedure output that is stored in ODS documents. PROC DOCUMENT enables a user to browse and edit output objects and hierarchies, and to replay them to any supported ODS output format. See SAS Output Delivery System: User's Guide for details.
EXPORT procedure: reads data from a SAS data set and writes it to an external data source.
FCMP procedure: enables you to create, test, and store SAS functions and subroutines before you use them in other SAS procedures. PROC FCMP accepts slight variations of DATA step statements. Most features of the SAS programming language can be used in functions and subroutines that are processed by PROC FCMP.
FONTREG procedure: adds system fonts to the SAS registry.
FORMAT procedure: creates user-defined informats and formats for character or numeric variables. PROC FORMAT also prints the contents of a format library, creates a control data set to write other informats or formats, and reads a control data set to create informats or formats.
FREQ procedure: produces one-way to n-way frequency tables and reports frequency counts. PROC FREQ can compute chi-square tests for one-way to n-way tables; for tests and measures of association and of agreement for two-way to n-way cross-tabulation tables; risks and risk difference for 2×2 tables; trends tests;and Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel statistics. You can also create output data sets.
FSLIST procedure: displays the contents of an external file or copies text from an external file to the SAS Text Editor.
IMPORT procedure: reads data from an external data source and writes them to a SAS data set.
INFOMAPS: creates or updates a SAS Information Map. See the Base SAS Guide to Information Maps for details.
JAVAINFO procedure: conveys diagnostic information to the user about the Java environment that SAS is using. The diagnostic information can be used to confirm that the SAS Java environment has been configured correctly and can be helpful when reporting problems to SAS technical support.
MEANS procedure: computes descriptive statistics for numeric variables across all observations and within groups of observations. You can also create an output data set that contains specific statistics and identifies minimum and maximum values for groups of observations.
METADATA procedure: sends a method call, in the form of an XML string, to a SAS Metadata Server.
METALIB procedure: updates metadata in a SAS Metadata Repository to match the tables in a library.
METAOPERATE procedure: performs administrative tasks on a metadata server.
MIGRATE procedure: migrates members in a SAS library forward to the most current release of SAS. The migration must occur within the same engine family; for example, V6, V7, or V8 can migrate to V9, but V6TAPE must migrate to V9TAPE.
OPTIONS procedure: lists the current values of all SAS system options.
OPTLOAD procedure: reads SAS system option settings from the SAS registry or a SAS data set, and puts them into effect.
OPTSAVE procedure: saves SAS system option settings to the SAS registry or a SAS data set.
PDS procedure: lists, deletes, and renames the members of a partitioned data set. See the SAS Companion for z/OS for more information.
PDSCOPY procedure: copies partitioned data sets from disk to tape, disk to disk, tape to tape, or tape to disk. See the SAS Companion for z/OS for more information.
PLOT procedure: produces scatter plots that graph one variable against another. The coordinates of each point on the plot correspond to the two variables' values in one or more observations of the input data set.
PMENU procedure: defines menus that you can use in DATA step windows, macro windows, and SAS/AF windows, or in any SAS application that enables you to specify customized menus.
PRINT procedure: prints the observations in a SAS data set, using all or some of the variables. PROC PRINT can also print totals and subtotals for numeric variables.
PRINTTO procedure: defines destinations for SAS procedure output and the SAS log.
PROTO procedure: enables you to register, in batch mode, external functions that are written in the C or C++ programming languages. You can use these functions in SAS as well as in C-language structures and types. After these functions are registered in PROC PROTO, they can be called from any SAS function or subroutine that is declared in the FCMP procedure, as well as from any SAS function, subroutine, or method block that is declared in the COMPILE procedure.
PRTDEF procedure: creates printer definitions for individual SAS users or all SAS users.
PRTEXP procedure: exports printer definition attributes to a SAS data set so that they can be easily replicated and modified.
PWENCODE procedure: encodes passwords for use in SAS programs.
RANK procedure: computes ranks for one or more numeric variables across the observations of a SAS data set. The ranks are written to a new SAS data set. Alternatively, PROC RANK produces normal scores or other rank scores.
REGISTRY procedure: imports registry information into the USER portion of the SAS registry.
RELEASE procedure: releases unused space at the end of a disk data set in the z/OS environment. See the SAS documentation for this operating environment for more information.
REPORT procedure: combines features of the PRINT, MEANS, and TABULATE procedures with features of the DATA step in a single report-writing tool that can produce both detail and summary reports.
SORT procedure: sorts observations in a SAS data set by one or more variables. PROC SORT stores the resulting sorted observations in a new SAS data set or replaces the original data set.
SOURCE procedure: provides an easy way to back up and process source library data sets. See the SAS documentation for your operating environment for more information.
SQL procedure: implements a subset of the Structured Query Language (SQL) for use in SAS. SQL is a standardized, widely used language that retrieves and updates data in SAS data sets, SQL views, and DBMS tables, as well as views based on those tables. PROC SQL can also create tables and views, summaries, statistics, and reports and perform utility functions such as sorting and concatenating.
STANDARD procedure: standardizes some or all of the variables in a SAS data set to a given mean and standard deviation and produces a new SAS data set that contains the standardized values.
SUMMARY procedure: computes descriptive statistics for the variables in a SAS data across all observations and within groups of observations and outputs the results to a new SAS data set.
TABULATE procedure: displays descriptive statistics in tabular form. The value in each table cell is calculated from the variables and statistics that define the pages, rows, and columns of the table. The statistic associated with each cell is calculated on values from all observations in that category. You can write the results to a SAS data set.
TAPECOPY procedure: copies an entire tape volume or files from one or more tape volumes to one output tape volume. See the SAS Companion for z/OS for more information.
TAPELABEL procedure: lists the label information of an IBM standard-labeled tape volume under the z/OS environment. See the SAS Companion for z/OS for more information.
TEMPLATE procedure: customizes ODS output for an entire SAS job or a single ODS output object. See SAS Output Delivery System: User's Guide for details.
TIMEPLOT procedure: produces plots of one or more variables over time intervals.
TRANSPOSE procedure: transposes a data set that changes observations into variables and vice versa.
TRANTAB procedure: creates, edits, and displays customized translation tables. See SAS National Language Support (NLS): Reference Guide for more information.
UNIVARIATE procedure: computes descriptive statistics (including quantiles), confidence intervals, and robust estimates for numeric variables. Provides detail on the distribution of numeric variables, which include tests for normality, plots to illustrate the distribution, frequency tables, and tests of location.
XSL procedure: transforms an XML document into another format, such as HTML, text, or another XML document type.

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