SAS Certification Prep Guide, 4th Edition

Understanding Audit Trails

As you modify a data set, you might want to track the changes that you make by using an audit trail. An audit trail is an optional SAS file that logs modifications to a SAS table. Audit trails are used to track changes that are made to the data set in place. Specifically, audit trails track changes that are made with the following:

• the VIEWTABLE window
• the data grid
• the MODIFY statement in the DATA step
• the UPDATE, INSERT, or DELETE statement in PROC SQL

For each addition, deletion, and update to the data, the audit trail automatically stores a copy of the variables in the observation that was updated, and also stores information such as who made the modification, what was modified, and when ...