Managing Output

Sorting Your Output
Eliminating Duplicate Rows in Output
Grouping Your Output
Saving Your Results
Running a Query

Sorting Your Output

You can sort the output from your query by one or more columns from the tables that are used in the query.
Note: It is possible to sort the output table by columns that are not selected for the output.
To sort your output:
  1. In the query window, click the Sort tab.
  2. You can add one or more columns to the Sort tab by dragging them from the columns list to the Sort tab. You can also click Add row button on the Sort tab toolbar and select one or more columns from the Choose Column window.
  3. Click the Sort box for the column on which you want to sort the data. From the drop-down list, select Ascending or Descending. The default sort direction is Ascending.
    Query Window with the Sort Tab
  4. If you are sorting by multiple columns, the output table is sorted first by the column that is listed first. Within each level of the first column, the rows are sorted by the second column in the list, and so on. You can change the sort order by selecting a column and clicking Move row up button and Move row down button to move the column up and down the list.

Eliminating Duplicate Rows in Output

Some types of queries output multiple, identical rows. Because these duplicate rows are generally not useful, SAS Studio enables you to keep only one of the identical rows and eliminate the duplicates.
To eliminate duplicate rows, click the Select tab and select the Select distinct rows only check box.

Grouping Your Output

If you have created a summarized column, you can choose to classify your data into groups based on the values in a column. This is equivalent to using the GROUP BY clause in an SQL query. For example, if you are calculating the average height of a group of students, you might want to group the results by age so that you can see the average height for each age group.
By default, the Automatically select groups option is selected on the Group tab. When this option is selected and you have performed a summary function on a column, your query is automatically grouped by all columns without summary functions. You can choose to edit the list of columns that the query is grouped by.
To group your output:
  1. In the query window, click the Group tab.
  2. You can add one or more columns to the Group tab by dragging them from the columns list to the Group tab. You can also click Add row button on the Group tab toolbar and select one or more columns from the Choose Column window.
    Note: To remove all of the automatically selected columns from the Group tab, clear the Automatically select groups option.
    Query Window with the Group Tab
  3. To change the order in which the columns are used to group the data, select the column that you want to move and click Move row up button and Move row down button .
The following example shows you how to find the average weight of students in each age group. First, add the Age and Weight columns to the Select tab, and then select the AVG summary function for the Weight column:
Query Window with a Summary Function
To see the average weight of students by age, the query is grouped by the Age column. The results show the average weight for each age group:
Query Window with the Group Tab
Note: By default, the query generates a table of the result. To generate a report of the results (which is displayed in Results tab), you must specify report as the output type for the query. For more information, see Saving Your Results.

Saving Your Results

You can choose to generate your results in any one of three formats: data table, data view, or report.
If you save your results as a data table or data view, you can specify the library and filename that you want to use. If you don’t specify the library and filename, the results are saved in the Work library.
To specify the results format:
  1. In the query window, click the Settings tab.
  2. Click the Properties tab. In the Results area, select the format that you want to use from the Output type drop-down list.
    Report
    saves the query results as a report that you can download as an HTML, PDF, or RTF file. Query results in this format are not updated until you rerun the query. You cannot run SAS tasks against query results in this format.
    Table
    saves the query results as a static data table against which you can run SAS tasks. Query results in this format are not updated until you rerun the query. By default, the data table is stored in the Work library.
    View
    saves the query results as a dynamic data view against which you can run SAS tasks. Each time you open query results in the data view format, the results are updated with any changes to the data that is used in the query. By default, the data view is stored in the Work library.
To save your results to a specific location:
  1. In the query window, click the Settings tab.
  2. Click the Properties tab. In the Results area, enter the name of the library in which you want to save your results in the Output location box.
  3. To specify a name for the results, enter the name that you want to use in the Output name box.

Running a Query

After you specify all the criteria for your query, you can generate your results by clicking Run button on the query window toolbar. The output data opens in the workspace on a separate tab.
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