The SQL Procedure

PROC SQL and the ANSI Standard

PROC SQL follows most of the guidelines set by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in its implementation of SQL. However, it is not fully compliant with the current ANSI Standard for SQL.(footnote 1)

The SQL research project at SAS has focused primarily on the expressive power of SQL as a query language. Consequently, some of the database features of SQL have not yet been implemented in PROC SQL.

SQL Procedure Enhancements

Reserved Words

PROC SQL reserves very few keywords and then only in certain contexts. The ANSI Standard reserves all SQL keywords in all contexts. For example, according to the Standard you cannot name a column GROUP because of the keywords GROUP BY.

The following words are reserved in PROC SQL:

The keyword CASE is always reserved; its use in the CASE expression (an SQL2 feature) precludes its use as a column name.

If you have a column named CASE in a table and you want to specify it in a PROC SQL step, then you can use the SAS data set option RENAME= to rename that column for the duration of the query. You can also surround CASE in double quotation marks ("CASE") and set the PROC SQL option DQUOTE=ANSI.
The keywords AS, ON, FULL, JOIN, LEFT, FROM, WHEN, WHERE, ORDER, GROUP, RIGHT, INNER, OUTER, UNION, EXCEPT, HAVING, and INTERSECT cannot normally be used for table aliases. These keywords all introduce clauses that appear after a table name. Since the alias is optional, PROC SQL deals with this ambiguity by assuming that any one of these words introduces the corresponding clause and is not the alias. If you want to use one of these keywords as an alias, then use the PROC SQL option DQUOTE=ANSI.
The keyword USER is reserved for the current userid. If you specify USER on a SELECT statement in conjunction with a CREATE TABLE statement, then the column is created in the table with a temporary column name that is similar to _TEMA001. If you specify USER in a SELECT statement without using the CREATE TABLE statement, then the column is written to the output without a column heading. In either case, the value for the column varies by operating environment, but is typically the userid of the user who is submitting the program or the value of the &SYSJOBID automatic macro variable.

If you have a column named USER in a table and you want to specify it in a PROC SQL step, then you can use the SAS data set option RENAME= to rename that column for the duration of the query. You can also enclose USER with double quotation marks ("USER") and set the PROC SQL option DQUOTE=ANSI.

Column Modifiers

PROC SQL supports the SAS INFORMAT=, FORMAT=, and LABEL= modifiers for expressions within the SELECT clause. These modifiers control the format in which output data are displayed and labeled.

Alternate Collating Sequences

PROC SQL allows you to specify an alternate collating (sorting) sequence to be used when you specify the ORDER BY clause. See the description of the SORTSEQ= option in PROC SQL Statement for more information.

ORDER BY Clause in a View Definition

PROC SQL permits you to specify an ORDER BY clause in a CREATE VIEW statement. When the view is queried, its data are always sorted according to the specified order unless a query against that view includes a different ORDER BY clause. See CREATE VIEW Statement for more information.

CONTAINS Condition

PROC SQL enables you to test whether a string is part of a column's value when you specify the CONTAINS condition. See CONTAINS condition for more information.

In-Line Views

The ability to code nested query-expressions in the FROM clause is a requirement of the ANSI Standard. PROC SQL supports such nested coding.

Outer Joins

The ability to include columns that both match and do not match in a join-expression is a requirement of the ANSI Standard. PROC SQL supports this ability.

Arithmetic Operators

PROC SQL supports the SAS exponentiation (**) operator. PROC SQL uses the notation <> to mean not equal.

Orthogonal Expressions

PROC SQL permits the combination of comparison, Boolean, and algebraic expressions. For example, (X=3)*7 yields a value of 7 if X=3 is true because true is defined to be 1. If X=3 is false, then it resolves to 0 and the entire expression yields a value of 0.

PROC SQL permits a subquery in any expression. This feature is required by the ANSI Standard. Therefore, you can have a subquery on the left side of a comparison operator in the WHERE expression.

PROC SQL permits you to order and group data by any kind of mathematical expression (except those including summary functions) using ORDER BY and GROUP BY clauses. You can also group by an expression that appears on the SELECT clause by using the integer that represents the expression's ordinal position in the SELECT clause. You are not required to select the expression by which you are grouping or ordering. See ORDER BY Clause and GROUP BY Clause for more information.

Set Operators

The set operators UNION, INTERSECT, and EXCEPT are required by the ANSI Standard. PROC SQL provides these operators plus the OUTER UNION operator.

The ANSI Standard also requires that the tables being operated upon all have the same number of columns with matching data types. The SQL procedure works on tables that have the same number of columns, as well as on tables that have a different number of columns, by creating virtual columns so that a query can evaluate correctly. See query-expression for more information.

Statistical Functions

PROC SQL supports many more summary functions than required by the ANSI Standard for SQL.

PROC SQL supports the remerging of summary function results into the table's original data. For example, computing the percentage of total is achieved with 100*x/SUM(x) in PROC SQL. See summary-function for more information on the available summary functions and remerging data.

SAS DATA Step Functions

PROC SQL supports many of the functions available to the SAS DATA step. Some of the functions that aren't supported are the variable information functions and functions that work with arrays of data. Other SQL databases support their own sets of functions.

PROC FCMP Functions

PROC SQL supports any user-written functions, except those functions with array elements that are created using PROC FCMP.

SQL Procedure Omissions

COMMIT Statement

The COMMIT statement is not supported.

ROLLBACK Statement

The ROLLBACK statement is not supported. The PROC SQL UNDO_POLICY= option or the SQLUNDOPOLICY system option addresses rollback. See the description of the UNDO_POLICY= option in PROC SQL Statement or the SQLUNDOPOLICY system option in the SAS Language Reference: Dictionary for more information.

Identifiers and Naming Conventions

In SAS, table names, column names, and aliases are limited to 32 characters and can contain mixed case. For more information on SAS naming conventions, see SAS Language Reference: Dictionary. The ANSI Standard for SQL allows longer names.

Granting User Privileges

The GRANT statement, PRIVILEGES keyword, and authorization-identifier features of SQL are not supported. You might want to use operating environment-specific means of security instead.

Three-Valued Logic

ANSI-compatible SQL has three-valued logic, that is, special cases for handling comparisons involving NULL values. Any value compared with a NULL value evaluates to NULL.

PROC SQL follows the SAS convention for handling missing values: when numeric NULL values are compared to non-NULL numbers, the NULL values are less than or smaller than all the non-NULL values; when character NULL values are compared to non-NULL characters, the character NULL values are treated as a string of blanks.

Embedded SQL

Currently there is no provision for embedding PROC SQL statements in other SAS programming environments, such as the DATA step or SAS/IML software.

FOOTNOTE 1: International Organization for Standardization (ISO): Database SQL. Document ISO/IEC 9075:1992. Also available as American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Document ANSI X3.135-1992.

Top of Page