SAS Programming 3: Advanced Techniques and Efficiencies

Classroom duration: 3.0 days Live Web duration: 6 half-day sessions Please note the System Requirements below. Course fee: $1,725 EPTO units: 3.3 CEUs: 1.8

This outline is provisional and subject to change.

This course is for SAS programmers who prepare data for analysis. The comparisons of manipulation techniques and resource cost benefits are designed to help programmers choose the most appropriate technique for their data situation.

This course can help prepare you for the following certification exam(s): SAS Advanced Programming Exam for SAS 9.

Learn how to compare various SAS programming techniques that enable you to

control memory, I/O, and CPU resources
create and use indexes
combine data horizontally and vertically
use hash and hiter DATA step component objects, arrays, and formats as lookup tables
compress SAS data sets
sample your SAS data sets.

Who should attend

Experienced SAS programmers

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Prerequisites

This course is not appropriate for beginning SAS software users. Before attending this course, you should have at least nine months of SAS programming experience and should have completed the SAS Programming II: Manipulating Data with the DATA Step course. Specifically, you should be able to do the following:

understand your operating system file structures and perform basic operating system tasks
understand programming logic concepts
understand the compilation and execution process of the DATA step
use different kinds of input to create SAS data sets from external files
use SAS software to access SAS data libraries
create and use SAS date values
read, concatenate, merge, match-merge, and interleave SAS data sets
use the DROP=, KEEP=, and RENAME= data set options
create multiple output data sets
use array processing and DO loops to process data iteratively
use SAS functions to perform data manipulation and transformations.

Course Contents

Introduction

course logisitics
measuring efficiencies
SAS DATA step processing

Controlling I/O Processing and Memory

controlling I/O
controlling memory
controlling data set size
compressing SAS data sets
controlling the page size and the number of available buffers (self-study)

Accessing Observations

creating an index
using an index
creating a sample data set
selecting unique observations
using Perl regular expressions for checking data integrity (self-study)

Using Lookup Tables to Match Data: Arrays

introduction to lookup techniques
using one-dimensional arrays as lookup tables
using a multidimensional array as a lookup table
loading a multidimensional array from a SAS data set

Using Lookup Tables to Match Data: Hash Objects

introduction
using hash object methods
loading a hash object with data from a SAS data set
using a hash object for chained lookups (self-study)
using a DATA step hiter object (self-study)

Using Lookup Tables to Match Data: Other Methods

using formats as lookup tables
DATA step merges and SQL procedure joins
using the DATA step to perform a match-merge

Combining Data Horizontally

combining data conditionally
using an index to combine data
combining summary and detail data

BY-Group Processing and Sorting

introduction
sorting resources
BY-group processing

Programmer Efficiency

introduction
writing flexible programs: combining raw data files vertically
creating views
using FILE and PUT statements to create a SAS program file
using the FCMP procedure

Editing the Config File or Creating an Autoexec.sas File

introduction
editing the Config file
creating an Autoexec.sas file

Conclusions

reviewing techniques to save resources
suggested reading for further information

Additional Topics (Self-Study)

networking efficiency considerations
creating generation data sets
creating integrity constraints
creating and using audit trails
checkpoint restart

Software

This course addresses Base SAS. This course is appropriate for students who are using SAS 8 or SAS 9 software.

Course Materials

Classroom: Students attend classroom courses in one of our public training centers. You receive a hardcopy of the course notes and, in some courses, can choose to take home a copy of the course data.

Live Web: Students attend Live Web classes using a Web browser and a telephone and interact with their instructor and fellow classmates in real time. Each student receives an e-mail with instructions on how to join the class three business days before the class begins. The instructions e-mail includes a link to download the course materials. Students need to download and print the course materials prior to class.

System Requirements

For Live Web, you must

review and follow the general system requirements.
complete the course exercises through our virtual lab. The virtual lab allows you to access the software used in class over the Internet, so that you do not need this software on your local machine.
run this test to connect to a virtual lab session. If firewall problems prevent you from connecting to the virtual lab, then you will need the following software installed and configured in your environment to participate in the course exercises:
- Base SAS 9.2 or 9.1.3 on a Windows operating system or SAS Learning Edition.
  Important: Students using SAS Learning Edition will need to create a shortcut to the SAS windowing environment (SAS Explorer, Enhanced Editor, Log, and Output windows) for use during the class. Follow these instructions for creating a shortcut to SAS prior to class.

Share Your Thoughts

Not sure if this course suits your needs or which delivery method is right for you? Give us a call at 800-333-7660 or send us e-mail. If you have suggestions for this course or would like for it to be offered at another training facility, let us know by adding to our Interest List.

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