Chapter 18
DATA Step Processing
Why Use a DATA Step? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Overview of DATA Step Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
Flow of Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
The Compilation Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
The Execution Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
Processing a DATA Step: A Walk-through . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
Sample DATA Step . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
Creating the Input Buffer and the Program Data Vector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
Reading a Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
Writing an Observation to the SAS Data Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
Reading the Next Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
When the DATA Step Finishes Executing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
About DATA Step Execution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
The Default Sequence of Execution in the DATA Step . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
Changing the Default Sequence of Execution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
Step Boundary—How to Know When Statements Take Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
What Causes a DATA Step to Stop Executing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
About Creating a SAS Data Set with a DATA Step . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Creating a SAS Data File or a SAS View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Sources of Input Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Reading Raw Data: Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Reading Data from SAS Data Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396
Generating Data from Programming Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396
Writing a Report with a DATA Step . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Example 1: Creating a Report without Creating a Data Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Example 2: Creating a Customized Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
Example 3: Creating an HTML Report Using ODS and the DATA Step . . . . . . . 402
The DATA Step and ODS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
DATA Step Processing Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
Why Use a DATA Step?
Using the DATA step is the primary method for creating a SAS data set with Base SAS
software. A DATA step is a group of SAS language statements that begin with a DATA
379
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