SAS Programming III: Advanced Techniques

Course Description
This two-day course builds on the concepts presented in the SAS Programming II:
Manipulating Data with the DATA Step course. This course focuses on manipulating different
forms of data, combining data, performing table lookups, and using permanent user-defined
formats. Programmers who are interested in improving programming efficiencies should
consider taking the Optimizing SAS Programs course.
Prerequisites
This course is not appropriate for beginning SAS software users. Before attending this course,
you should have at least nine months of SAS programming experience and should have
completed the SAS Programming II: Manipulating Data with the DATA Step course.
Specifically, you should be able to
understand file structures and write system commands to create and access files
understand programming logic concepts
understand the compilation and execution process of the DATA step
use different kinds of input to create SAS data sets from external files
use SAS software to access SAS data libraries
create and use SAS date values
read, concatenate, merge, match-merge, and interleave SAS data sets
use the data set options DROP=, KEEP=, and RENAME=
create multiple output data sets
use array processing and DO loops to process data iteratively
use SAS functions to perform data manipulation and transformations.
Course Contents
Accessing Observations
creating sample data sets
creating and maintaining indexes
Combining Data Vertically
appending raw data files
appending SAS data sets
Combining Data Horizontally
joining data without a common variable
combining summary and detail data
using an index to combine data
Using Lookup Tables to Match Data
working with multidimensional arrays
transposing data using the TRANSPOSE procedure
working with DATA step hash tables (self-study)
Formatting Data
creating permanent formats
creating formats from SAS data sets
maintaining permanent formats
creating informats
SAS DATA Step Views
creating a DATA step view
Updating SAS Data Sets (self-study)
modifying SAS data sets in place
creating generation data sets
creating integrity constraints
creating and using audit trails
validating and modifying data using Perl regular expressions
Software Addressed
This course addresses the following software product(s): Base SAS. This course is
appropriate for students who are using SAS Version 8 or SAS 9 software.
Course Materials
You receive SAS Programming III: Advanced Techniques Course Notes.