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What Is the Output Delivery System?

Prior to Version 7, SAS procedures that produced printed output (that is, output destined for the procedure output file) generated output that was designed for a traditional line-printer. This type of output has limitations that prevent users from getting the most value from their results:

• Traditional SAS output is limited to monospace fonts. In this day of desktop document editors and publishing systems, users want more versatility in printed output.

• Traditional SAS output provides no way for you to parse its contents. You can't, for example, know in advance in what column the values for the third variable in a report begin.

• Quite a few commonly used procedures did not produce output data sets. Users who wanted to use output from one of these procedures as input to another procedure relied on PROC PRINTTO and the DATA step to retrieve results that could not be stored in an output data set.

Beginning with Version 7, procedure output became much more flexible. The Output Delivery System (ODS) has been designed to overcome the limitations of traditional SAS output and to make it easy to make new formatting options available to users. ODS is a method of delivering output in a variety of formats and of making the formatted output easy to access. Important features of ODS include the following:

• ODS combines raw data with one or more table definitions to produce one or more output objects. These objects can be sent to any or all ODS destinations. The currently available ODS destinations can produce an output data set, traditional monospace output, output that is formatted for a high-resolution printer, and output that is formatted in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).

• ODS provides table definitions that define the structure of the output from procedures and from the DATA step. You can customize the output by modifying these definitions or creating your own.

• ODS provides a way for you to choose individual output objects to send to ODS destinations. For instance, PROC UNIVARIATE produces five output objects. You can easily create HTML output, an output data set, traditional Listing output, or Printer output from any or all of these output objects. You can send different output objects to different destinations.

• ODS stores a link to each output object in the Results folder in the Results window.

In addition, ODS removes responsibility for formatting output from individual procedures and from the DATA step. The procedure or DATA step supplies raw data and the name of the table definition that contains the formatting instructions, and ODS formats the output. Because formatting is now centralized in ODS, the addition of a new ODS destination does not affect any procedures or the DATA step. As future destinations are added to ODS, they will automatically become available to all procedures that support ODS and to the DATA step.

This document provides several different kinds of information about ODS.

• This section shows you how to accomplish some of the basic tasks that you are most likely to want to do with the Output Delivery System: how to send procedure results to each of the ODS destinations and how to customize the appearance of procedure output. More detailed information and examples appear in the reference sections of this document.

• Basic Concepts of the Output Delivery System discusses the concepts that will help you to understand and to use ODS to your best advantage.

• The ODS Statements provides reference information on the ODS statements. These statements control the many features of the Output Delivery System.

• Using the Output Delivery System in the DATA Step explains how to use ODS with the DATA step.

• The TEMPLATE Procedure explains how to customize your output.

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