SAS Visual Data Builder
supports joins for tables and subqueries. You can join tables to each
other, including self joins. You can join subqueries to tables and
join subqueries to subqueries. When you use a subquery in a join,
the join condition is made against the output table for the subquery.
The data builder supports joining up to 256 tables.
When you drop a table
or subquery onto the workspace, the data builder attempts to determine
a join condition automatically. When the data builder creates a join
automatically using foreign keys or by matching columns, the join
is added as an inner join. The data builder also supports left, right,
and full joins. You need to specify the join type manually if you
do not want an inner join.
In addition to easily
adding joins to a data query, the data builder generates an SQL statement
with all of the joins declared explicitly. For example, you can specify
an inner join in a WHERE clause, such as
WHERE t1.order_id=t2.order_id
.
However, mixing inner joins in a WHERE clause and outer join types
in a single data query can be complex to read and understand.
SAS Visual Data Builder
always generates an SQL statement with inner joins declared explicitly.
For example, see the following code sample:
LEFT JOIN
LIB1.TRANSACTION_TYPE_DIM TRANSACTION_TYPE_DIM
ON CASH_FLOW_FACT.TRANSACTION_TYPE_KEY =
TRANSACTION_TYPE_DIM.TRANSACTION_TYPE_KEY
INNER JOIN
LIB1.TRANSACTION_DIM TRANSACTION_DIM
ON PARTY_DIM.SEGMENT_ID = TRANSACTION_DIM.SEGMENT_ID
AND PARTY_DIM.TRANSACTION_KEY = TRANSACTION_DIM.TRANSACTION_KEY