There is a new version of this course. Please see SAS Programming 2: Data Manipulation Techniques.

This course is for those who need to learn data manipulation techniques using SAS DATA and procedure steps to access, transform, and summarize SAS data sets. The course builds on the concepts that are presented in the SAS Programming 1: Essentials course and is not recommended for beginning SAS software users.

• control SAS data set input and output
• combine SAS data sets
• summarize, read, and write different types of data
• perform DO loop and SAS array processing
• transform character, numeric, and date variables.

Who should attend

Before attending this course, you should have at least six months of experience writing SAS programs or have completed the SAS Programming 1: Essentials course and used SAS for at least one month. Specifically, you should be able to

• submit a SAS program
• diagnose and correct syntax errors
• examine descriptor and data portions of a SAS data set
• access SAS data libraries
• read and create SAS data sets
• read Excel spreadsheets
• read delimited raw data files
• examine data errors when reading raw data files
• use SAS procedures to validate data
• clean invalid data
• create variables
• combine SAS data sets
• use global statements
• use labels and formats, including user-defined formats
• subset observations
• produce summary reports using the FREQ and MEANS procedures.

This course addresses Base SAS software.

This course is appropriate for students who are using SAS 9 software.

• an overview of SAS Foundation
• course logistics
• course data files

• writing observations explicitly
• writing to multiple SAS data sets
• selecting variables and observations

• creating an accumulating total variable
• accumulating totals for a group of data

• reading raw data files with formatted input
• controlling when a record loads

• manipulating character values
• manipulating numeric values
• converting variable type

• using the PUTLOG statement

• DO loop processing
• conditional DO loop processing
• SAS array processing
• using SAS arrays

• rotating with the DATA step

• using data manipulation techniques with match-merging

• creating permanent formats

• an overview of other languages
• using the SQL procedure
• the SAS macro language

• SAS resources
• next steps