Overview As you discovered in See an overview of SAS, you can use SAS programs to access, manage, analyze, and present your data. The SAS programming language is both powerful and flexible. You can program any number of analyses and reports with it. The SAS language contains statements, expressions, functions and CALL routines, options, formats, and informats--elements that many programming languages share. SAS can also simplify programming for you with its library of built-in programs known as SAS procedures. SAS procedures use data values from SAS data sets to produce preprogrammed reports, requiring minimal effort from you. Base SAS procedures enable you to manipulate data store and retrieve information perform statistical analysis create reports. This task shows you the main characteristics of SAS programs. It also guides you through the basic steps of creating, running, and managing SAS programs and their output.