About Attribute Dictionaries

An attribute dictionary is a SAS table that is created by the metabase facility. Each attribute in an attribute dictionary has values for some or all of the following parameters:

Type

can be one of the following attribute types:

AUTODATA

is for SAS table attributes that you want to assign automatically when registering a SAS table.

AUTOVAR

is for column attributes that you want to assign automatically when registering a SAS table.

DATA

is for SAS table attributes.

VARIABLC

is for character column attributes.

VARIABLE

is for character or numeric column attributes.

VARIABLN

is for numeric column attributes.

Name

is the attribute name.

Description

is the attribute description.

In addition, the attribute dictionary can contain the name of up to three assign methods (FRAME, PROGRAM, or SCL entries) that handle special cases when you register data and assign attributes.

The attribute dictionary that comes with SAS/EIS software is stored in SASHELP.DFTDICT and contains the default SAS/EIS extended attributes.

You can create your own attribute dictionaries to contain attributes that you define yourself, and you can use your own attributes and attribute dictionaries in SAS/EIS objects that you write yourself.

Copyright © 2007 by SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.