SAS Overview

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com 1
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Preface
SAS is one language everyone understands in Consumer Finance Analytics! That explains
why an Analyst should learn it for an effective communication. This guide is an effort to equip
a beginner consumer finance analyst with basic SAS skills, in a week’s time.
This guide attempts to:
1. Simplify SAS for the beginners, trimming the possibilities down to a bare minimum.
2. Give an introduction to the possibilities SAS offers for data extraction, analysis and
reporting.
3. Customize the content to Consumer Finance environment and the way SAS being
used there.
4. Provide more examples and step-by-step instruction to the readers to practice SAS
programs.
Target audience is expected to have basic computer skills like working with a spreadsheet or
word processor. Also the user should know how to edit a program in a Windows based SAS
System. No statistics or programming background is expected.
Practice problems at the end of the chapters are collected from SAS Institute website and are
tested in Windows environment. Readers are encouraged to tryout each of them by
reproducing them in SAS System.
Your suggestions to improve this working guide are most welcome! Please go to the
discussion forum http://s4sas.blogspot.com to post a comment.
JEOMOAN KURIAN
Jeo.kurian@gmail.com
Contents
Preface ............................................................................................................. 2
Consumer Finance Analytics ......................................................................... 5
Scope of Analytics in Consumer Finance ................................................. 6
Introduction to SAS System ........................................................................... 8
SAS Language in Nutshell ............................................................................. 9
First Steps with Data and SAS..................................................................... 10
Data Value, Variable, Observations, and Dataset ................................. 10
Rules for SAS names................................................................................ 11
Rules for SAS statements ........................................................................ 12
A Simple Program Explained ....................................................................... 13
Getting Data In .............................................................................................. 17
Reading Data Instreams and External Files using INPUT .................... 17
Reading data using PROC IMPORT ....................................................... 21
Data Extraction using PROC SQL........................................................... 22
Reading EBCDIC files using SAS............................................................ 23
Working with Datasets .................................................................................. 25
SAS variables ............................................................................................ 25
Creating variables with INPUT Statement .............................................. 27
Specifying a New Variable in a LENGTH Statement ............................. 28
Creating variables through PROC SQL and PROC IMPORT............... 29
Array Variables .......................................................................................... 30
Variable LABELs ....................................................................................... 31
Variable FORMATs ................................................................................... 32
SAS Functions in DATA steps ................................................................. 34
MERGE –Combining datasets ................................................................. 36
Conditional Processing with WHERE, IF-ELSE, DO-END.................... 37
Procedures for Data Insights ....................................................................... 42
PROC DATASETS .................................................................................... 42
PROC PRINT............................................................................................. 43
PROC SORT.............................................................................................. 44
PROC TRANSPOSE ................................................................................ 46
PROC DOWNLOAD.................................................................................. 48
PROC FREQ.............................................................................................. 48
PROC MEANS........................................................................................... 51
PROC GPLOT ........................................................................................... 52
SAS Powered Reporting............................................................................... 56
PROC EXPORT ........................................................................................ 56
ODS HTML................................................................................................. 56
Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) .............................................................. 58
SAS Macro Processing................................................................................. 61
SAS Macro Variables................................................................................ 61
Macro Programs ........................................................................................ 63
PROC SQL and SAS .................................................................................... 66
Data extraction with PROC SQL.............................................................. 66
SAS Data steps with PROC SQL ............................................................ 67
PROC SQL and SELECT statement ....................................................... 68
Data retrieval Methods using SELECT ................................................... 69
Unix for SAS Analysts................................................................................... 75
Unix Server Spaces or Remote Storage................................................. 75

SASWORK in UNIX ................................................................................. 75
A List of Useful UNIX Commands............................................................ 76
Sum-up With OPTIONS................................................................................ 79
Appendix-I Practice Programs ..................................................................... 80
Reading data using simple list input........................................................ 80
Reading data using column input ............................................................ 80
Reading data using formatted input......................................................... 80
Reading data using named input ............................................................. 81
Reading comma delimited data with modified list input......................... 81
Reading a TAB delimited file.................................................................... 81
Reading multiple records to create one observation ............................. 82
Use of PROC IMPORT to read a CSV, TAB or delimited file ............. 82
Reading a comma delimited file with a .csv extension .......................... 83
Creating a delimited file using a PUT statement .................................... 83
Creating an external file with column-aligned data ................................ 83
Concatenating data sets Using SET ....................................................... 84
A Simple MERGE...................................................................................... 84
Merging and creation of subsets based on Origin ............................... 85
Convert missing values to zero and values of zero to missing............. 85
Convert selected numeric values from zero to missing......................... 86
Create and apply user-defined formats................................................... 86
Convert values from character to numeric.............................................. 87
Convert values from numeric to character.............................................. 87
Working with Dates in the SAS System .................................................. 88
Use of MDY function ................................................................................ 90
Convert a SAS date to a character variable ........................................... 90
Calculate number of years, months, and days between two dates...... 90
Determine the week number of the year................................................. 91
DO LOOP block......................................................................................... 91
Using the SCAN function.......................................................................... 92
INDEX Function for String Search........................................................... 93
Using arrays and DO loop in Data Step.................................................. 93
Using _TEMPORARY_ arrays for Missing value Treatment................. 94
A Simple SAS Macro ................................................................................ 95
BASIC PROC SQL Exercises ................................................................. 95
MERGING using PROC SQL................................................................... 96
PROC FREQ- Options available.............................................................. 97
PROC MEANS........................................................................................... 98
PROC SUMMARY..................................................................................... 99
Comparison of MEANS and SUMMARY Output.................................. 100
PROC GPLOT ......................................................................................... 101
Quick Index .................................................................................................. 102
Consumer Finance Analytics

The term “consumer finance” refers to any form of financing to consumers. However, in the
United States, the term "consumer finance" often refers to sub prime lending- that is lending
to people with less than perfect credit history. Availability of credit to the sub-prime segment is
at a rate higher than the people with relatively better credit history. All banks lend to the prime
segments but the sub prime lending is usually done by specialized institutions. The major
consumer finance lenders in the US are CITIFinancial, GE Money, HSBC and Wells Fargo.
Consumer finance covers a variety of products under secured and unsecured loans:
Secured Loans: The loans that are guaranteed with some asset like a car or a house so that
repossession of the asset is possible in case the consumer defaults the payment. Auto loans
and mortgages examples.
Unsecured Loans: The loans that are not backed by any security. There is no repossession
exists for this kind of loans but the lender can take a legal action in case of default. Examples
are Personal Loans and Credit cards.
The sub prime lending ,dominated by CITI and GE Money, has their major share of income
coming through PLCC cards (Private Label Credit Cards). These cards are typically issued
for retail chains like Wal-Mart, Home Depot, GAP, Sears, Sam’s Club and labeled as their
own store cards (hence the name Private Label).Apart from its sub-prime nature, the
customers often get special discounts and reward points when they shop in these stores with
the retailer specific cards. However the interest rate on these cards is often higher than the
bankcard rates because of the average high risk profile of the customers. The financial
institutions like GE Money manage the credit program for these retailers by funding the
retailer next day of purchase and collecting it back from the customers.
The retailers benefit from the increased sales as the cardholders shop in where they can get
credit and special rewards. The finance companies get a discount income from the retailer (1-
2%), interest income from the customer for the credit that is revolved and other fee income
like late fees, over limit charges and insurance charges. Consumer finance companies are the
risk takers and any write off or defaults on the payments are usually absorbed by them.
However in today’s competitive world, it’s not hard to find that some finance companies pay a
percentage of the business to the retailer or retailer is absorbing some loss from the finance
companies(This mostly depend on the retailer’s standing in the Market). Consumer finance
companies also offer credit through dealers and brokers (refereed as dealer financing or retail
sales financing) for financing cars, boats, homes and such high value items.
As we have seen earlier, average risk profile of the people, a consumer finance company deal
with, is relatively high. A typical loss rates of PLCC cards are 7% of receivables but for a
bankcard its just 5.5%. This is one reason the interest charged on the customer is high for
sub-prime segment.
Scope of Analytics in Consumer Finance
Consumer finance is more like a volume based business where million of loan applications
and accounts are handled with thin profit margins. In such a scenario, managers depend on
the analytics department to control the risk-returns statistically. This requires data
warehousing, scorecard development, data segmentation and pattern analysis, tracking
dashboards and comprehensive reporting systems. If implemented, SAS is used in meeting
all or some of the above requirements. Let us look at some of these specific uses in detail.
Acquisition- This is the first place where analytics is used to target and acquire the right
people. Often the pre approved (pre screened) credit cards are mailed to prospects. SAS
based scorecard and segmentation techniques are used to mine the address lists and
demographic information available in the credit bureaus to arrive at this prospect lists. In
cases of walk-in applications, the scorecards developed in using SAS score the applications,
often online, to come out with a decision. Further, acquisition and strategy tracking
dashboards are developed to monitor the acquisition process and also to compare various
strategies in a champion-challenger framework.
Account Management –Authorization, credit line management, sales promotion, account

activation, cross-selling and collections are some of the activities analytically driven in the
consumer finance. Once the accounts are acquired, it important to monitor them for potential
risk. The company should have a robust MIS and reporting system for the managers to know
how each segment of the customers is doing and take actions if things are not going in the
right direction. More than 60% of resources in any analytics departments spend time to
develop and produce these important reports. SAS is used widely for all these purposes due
to its flexibility to work with multiple platforms and databases and produce reports in various
formats like excel html, access or SAS itself.
Scoring and Modeling: Another major area of SAS application is scoring and modeling.
Logistics regression based scorecards are developed at various lifecycles of the products.
Such scorecards predict the probability of a person responding to an offer mail or probability
of a default or willingness of a customer to repay or rank orders any such desirability.
Segmentation tools in SAS are favorites of marketing managers as they can zero down to the
prospects they want to do the campaign for activation or sales promotion. Operations use
SAS to analyze the call volume in their contact centers and how to optimize the system to
improve the collections or cross sell efforts. In short, all risk, marketing, collections and
operations departments use SAS to analyze data and reporting.
Data Management: SAS is also used for data warehousing. SAS has built in modules and
function to handle data from various sources and convert them into a format required for the
analytics purposes. Though most of the enterprise data warehouses now use Oracle for
storing data , SAS data marts are quite popular among analytics users to subset data from
these huge warehouses and make it time series based or department specific. ETL
(extraction, transformation and Loading) process here requires working with internal data
warehouse and other department specific files/databases.
To summarize , some of the SAS tools/modules/utilities typically in consumer finance

environment are data extraction, manipulation and formatting features of Base SAS , logistics
regression , cluster and principal component analysis, SQL procedures and reporting using
ODS/DDE with excel interface.
Introduction to SAS System

The SAS System, originally Statistical Analysis System, is an integrated system of software
products provided by the SAS Institute that enables a user to perform:
• Data entry, retrieval, management, and mining

• Report writing and graphics
• Statistical Analysis and Operations Research
• Forecasting and Decision Support
• Data Warehousing (Extract, Transform, Load)
Though SAS system provides a menu driven interface, most of the interaction with SAS
system in analytics is done through writing SAS programs. SAS programs provide high level
of flexibility to the user. Also, platforms like Unix and Mainframe do not provide a menu driven
interface for SAS.
A SAS program is composed of two fundamental components:
DATA step(s)- the part of the program in which a structure for the data to be analyzed is
created. Variables corresponding to the various elements of the data set are defined, and the
data are assigned to the Variables. Data may be input manually in the body of the program,
or they may be read in from a file. Additionally data may be stored in a data warehouse (for
example Consumer Data Warehouse in Stoner server).
PROCs (PROCedures) - the SAS language is organized into a series of procedures, or

PROCs, each of which is dedicated to a particular form of data manipulation or statistical
analysis to be performed on data sets created in the DATA step. For example:
PROC PRINT: Prints the contents of a data set and create reports.
PROC FREQ: Produces frequency and cross tabulation tables on the variables specified.
PROC MEANS: Computes means, standard deviations and other summary Statistics for
some or all of the variables in a data set.
PROC TTEST: Computes the 2-sample t-test for comparing the means of 2 treatments.
PROC REG: Performs regression analysis using the method of least squares.
PROC GPLOT: Constructs plots of the data as specified by the user.
A SAS program consists of one or more DATA steps to get the data into a format that SAS
can understand and one or more calls to PROCs to perform various analyses on the data.
SAS Language in Nutshell
To use SAS it is necessary that you are acquainted with the scripting known as SAS
language. SAS programs are written using SAS language to manipulate, clean, describe and
to do data analysis.
A SAS program consists of a series of DATA, data transformation and PROCedure

statements. An entry level SAS user should at least know how to use the following SAS
statements to have a control over the language.
DATA;
INPUT;
CARDS;
TITLE;
LABEL;
FORMAT;
IF / THEN; ELSE;
WHERE;
SET;
SORT;
MERGE;
PROC PRINT;
PROC FREQ;
PROC MEANS;
PROC GPLOT;
PROC SQL;
In the chapters that follow, you get more familiar with these statements/procedures and
various features and options that are available with each one of them.
First Steps with Data and SAS
Objectives of this chapter is to:
• Understand the terms: data value, variable, observation, and data set.
• Understand the rules for writing SAS statements and for naming variables and data
sets.
Let us start with a generic example to understand how SAS reads and understands data.
Most of the times, the data is extracted from a data warehouse. But many a times we need to
create our own datasets for testing certain procedures or functions so this learning comes
handy.
Below is the table that provides some information about 10 accounts holders of a credit card
company. Information includes account number, Account Open Date, Account Status Code
and current Credit Limit. Now let us look at some data features.
Account # Open Date Status Code Credit Limit

1234670 11-Sep-04 Z 2000
1234671 12-Sep-04 3000
1234672 13-Sep-04 Z 2500
1234673 14-Sep-04 T 3200
1234674 15-Sep-04 8000
1234675 16-Sep-04 D 2000
1234676 17-Sep-04 4000
1234677 18-Sep-04 S 6000
1234678 19-Sep-04 T 8000
1234679 20-Sep-04 T 2000
Data Value, Variable, Observations, and Dataset
DATA VALUE
Data value is the basic unit of information. In the field containing information about the
account holder’s credit limit, the DATA VALUES are 2000, 3000 etc. The DATA VALUES in
the field ‘status code’ are ‘Z’,‘D’, ‘S’ and ‘T’.
VARIABLE
A set of data values that describes a given attribute makes up a VARIABLE. Each column of
data values is a VARIABLE. For example, the first column in our data set is reserved for the
VARIABLE we'll call Account #. It has all the account numbers of the sample we have for the
credit card holders
SAS variables are of 2 types - numeric and character. Values of numeric variables can only
be numbers or a period (.) for missing data. Character variables can be made up of letters
and special characters such as plus signs, dollar signs, colons and percent signs, as well as
numeric digits.
In the sample data above, account number and credit limit are numeric variables and status
code is a character variable. Open date is a field that deserves special mention. In SAS,
dates are stored as numeric but displayed in various format using SAS formats.
OBSERVATION
All the data values associated with a case, a single entity, a subject, an individual, a year, or a
record and so on, make up an OBSERVATION. Each row of the data table (or Matrix)
represents one OBSERVATION. The row below represents all the data values associated
with OBSERVATION #1.
Account # Open Date Status Code Credit Limit

1234670 11-Sep-04 Z 2000
DATA SET
A DATA SET is a collection of data values usually arranged in a rectangular table (or matrix).
A SAS DATA SET is the special way that SAS organizes and stores the data. For example, if
we convert our sample into a SAS dataset we will have a data set with 4 columns (fields) and
10 rows with 3 numeric fields and 1 character field.
The DATA step creates the SAS data set and the PROC steps are instructions indicating how
the SAS data set is to be manipulated or analyzed. There are certain procedures where the
outcome of their execution results in creation of one or many datasets.
Rules for SAS names
Among the kinds of SAS names that appear in SAS statements are variables names, SAS
data sets, formats, procedures, options, and statement labels.
1. Many SAS names can be 32 characters long; others have a maximum length of 8.
2. The first character must be a letter (A, B, C, . . ., Z) or underscore (_). Subsequent
characters can be letters, numeric digits (0, 1, . . ., 9), or underscores.
3. You can use upper or lowercase letters. SAS processes names as uppercase
regardless of how you type them.
4. Blanks cannot appear in SAS names.

5. Special characters, except for the underscore, are not allowed. In file reference, you
can use the dollar sign ($), pound sign (#), and at sign (@).
6. SAS reserves a few names for automatic variables and variable lists. For example,
_N_ and _ERROR_ .
Rules for SAS statements
1. SAS statements may begin in any column of the line.

2. SAS statements must end with a semicolon (;).
3. Some SAS statements may consist of more than one line of commands.
4. A SAS statement may continue over more than one line.
5. One or more blanks should be placed between items in SAS statements. If the items
are special characters such as '=', '+', '$', the blanks are not necessary.
A Simple Program Explained
Objective of this chapter:
1. Learn to use the DATA statement

2. Learn to use the INPUT statement
3. Learn to use the CARDS statement
4. Learn how to use the semicolon (;)
5. Learn how to include TITLES on your output
6. Learn RUN statement.
7. Learn to use two Procedures – PRINT and FREQ
8. How to create a permanent dataset using LIBNAME
9. Learn how to run a SAS program
Let us start with a simple SAS program. This program creates a SAS dataset names Sample
accounts with 4 columns. Two of them are numeric and rests of the columns are characters.
This program demonstrates the use of DATA, CARDS, and INPUT statements and also
demonstrates the use of two procedures viz. PROC PRINT and PROC FREQ. Each and
every component in the program is explained in detail below.
Libname loc ‘c:\mydata’;
Data sample_accounts;
INPUT Account 1-7 OpenDate $ 9-17 StatusCode $ 21-22 CreditLimit 25-29;
CARDS;
1234670 11-Sep-04 Z 2000
1234671 12-Sep-04 3000
1234672 13-Sep-04 Z 2500
1234673 14-Sep-04 T 3200
1234674 15-Sep-04 8000
1234675 16-Sep-04 D 2000
1234676 17-Sep-04 4000
1234677 18-Sep-04 S 6000
1234678 19-Sep-04 T 8000
1234679 20-Sep-04 T 2000
;
run;
data rloc.sample_accounts; /* stores data permanently*/

set sample_accounts;
run;
Proc Print data = loc.sample_accouts;

Title " Account Sample";
run;
Proc Freq data =loc.sample_accounts ;

tables statuscode;
run;
Note: Data, input and proc statements are case insensitive. Open date is read as character
variable to simplify the example.
Proc Print and Proc Freq are used to show how these two procedures used to print data.
These procedures are explained in details later in this book.
LIBNAME Statement
Use: define a SAS library name
Syntax: Libname xx <folder reference>;
Libname loc ‘c:\mydata’;
Libname is used to declare a data library. Sas data can be stored permanently by saving it to
a library. In this program, data is stored in ‘C:\mydata’ using this library reference.
DATA Statement
Use: Names the SAS data set
Syntax: DATA SOMENAME;
Result: A temporary SAS data set named sample_accounts is created
The DATA statement signals the beginning of a DATA step. The general form of the SAS
DATA statement is:
DATA SOMENAME;
The DATA statement names the data set you are creating. The name should be 1-32
characters and must begin with a letter or underscore.
INPUT Statement
Use: Defines names and order of variables to SAS
Syntax: INPUT variable variable_type column(s);
Result: Input data are defined for SAS
The INPUT statement specifies the names and order of the variables in your data. Although
there are three types of INPUT statements, which can be mixed, the beginning SAS user
should only be concerned with learning how to use the Column Input style.
The INPUT statement should indicate in which columns each variable might be found. In
addition, the INPUT statement should indicate how many lines it takes to record all of the
information for each case or observation. The general form of the SAS INPUT statement is:
The variables OperDate and StatusCode are character variable as indicated by the dollar
sign ($) after the variable name The other variables are numeric.
CARDS Statement
Use: Signals that input data will follow
Syntax: CARDS;
Result: Data can be processed for the SAS data set
The CARDS statement signals that the data will follow next and immediately precedes your
input data lines. The general form of the CARDS statement is:

CARDS;
1234670 11-Sep-04 Z 2000
1234671 12-Sep-04 3000
1234672 13-Sep-04 Z 2500
1234673 14-Sep-04 T 3200
1234674 15-Sep-04 8000
1234675 16-Sep-04 D 2000
1234676 17-Sep-04 4000
1234677 18-Sep-04 S 6000
1234678 19-Sep-04 T 8000
1234679 20-Sep-04 T 2000
;
run;
Note: If the data is contained in an external file, instead of the CARDS, you will use an INFILE
statement to specify where that file resides. (Example: INFILE 'c:\accounts.txt';).
SEMICOLON
Use: Signals the end of any SAS statement
Syntax:A DATA Step or PROCedure statement; (DATA;)
DATA sample_accounts;

CARDS;
Proc Print data = sample_accouts;

Title " Account Sample"; run;
Result: SAS is signaled that the statement is complete

The semicolon (;) is used as a delimiter to indicate the end of SAS statements.
TITLE Statement
Use: Puts TITLES on your output
Syntax: TITLE 'some title';
Title " Account Sample";
Result: A TITLE is added at the top of each page of the output printed.
The TITLE statement assigns a title, which appears at the top of the output page.
PROC PRINT and PROC FREQ: These are two common procedures used to print the
content of the dataset created and to produce a frequency table on a status code column.
RUN Statement
Use: Instruct SAS to execute the SAS program
Syntax: RUN;
Result: The statements and procedures specified in the SAS program blocks are
executed.
How to Run a SAS Program
In a windows environment there are three different windows that help in successful program
execution. Program Editor is used to compose the programs and to execute it, Log window
displays the log of execution and Output window displays the output of the program.
Many times we use remote ‘signon’ to log on to a Unix server and in that case the program is
running is a remote server. If we are using remote sign-on from windows, log and output are
automatically downloaded to the local desktop.
Once the program is executed check the log for any errors or warning. Logs will normally give
a clear idea whether the syntax was used correctly or the program was successfully run.
In Unix and Mainframe the programs are composed and executed differently. Please refer a
relevant manual for the same. Good news is that SAS procedures and statements that are
used in these platforms are same.
Getting Data In
Objective of this Chapter
• To learn data sources and methods to read data into SAS.

• To learn how to use INPUT, INFILE, PROC IMPORT and PROC SQL for reading
data.
In a Consumer Finance environment, data warehouses are commonly used to store data. But
its not unusual that we will have to read data from a variety of sources like spreadsheets, text
files, comma separated files, MS access tables or manually entering through program editor.
Data files from credit bureaus and other external data vendors are sent to us as large data
files with various formats so its important to understand how to read them.
SAS understands only SAS datasets and formats so its important to convert all kinds of data
into a form which SAS understands. The data so converted are called SAS datasets. This
chapter explains various ways SAS reads data to make SAS DATASETS.
Reading Data Instreams and External Files using INPUT
Reading free formatted data instream(LIST INPUT)
One of the most common ways to read data into SAS is by reading the data instream in a
data step - that is, by typing the data directly into the syntax of your SAS program. This
approach is good for relatively small datasets. Spaces are usually used to "delimit" (or
separate) free formatted data. For example:
DATA sample_accounts;
INPUT Account OpenDate $ StatusCode $ CreditLimit ;
CARDS;
1234670 11-Sep-04 ZX 2000
1234671 12-Sep-04 N 3000
1234672 13-Sep-04 Z 2500
12346730 14-Sep-04 TN 3200
1234674 15-Sep-04 X 8000
1234675 16-Sep-04 D 2000
12346767 17-Sep-04 N 4000
1234677 18-Sep-04 S 6000
1234678 19-Sep-04 TS 8000
1234679 20-Sep-04 T 2000
;
RUN;
Reading fixed formatted data instream(COLUMN INPUT)
Fixed formatted data can also be read in-stream. Usually, because there are no
delimiters (such as spaces, commas, or tabs) to separate fixed formatted data,
column definitions are required for every variable in the dataset. That is, you need to
provide the beginning and ending column numbers for each variable. This also
requires the data to be in the same columns for each case. For example, if we
rearrange the card accounts data from above, we can read it as fixed formatted data:
INPUT Account 1-7 OpenDate $ 9-17 StatusCode $ 21-22 CreditLimit 25-
29;
CARDS;
1234670 11-Sep-04 Z 2000
1234671 12-Sep-04 3000
1234672 13-Sep-04 Z 2500
1234673 14-Sep-04 T 3200
1234674 15-Sep-04 8000
1234675 16-Sep-04 D 2000
1234676 17-Sep-04 4000
1234677 18-Sep-04 S 6000
1234678 19-Sep-04 T 8000
1234679 20-Sep-04 T 2000;
RUN;
Reading fixed formatted data from an external file
Suppose you are working in a windows environment and you have a text file called
‘sample_accounts.txt’ in ‘C:\Mydata’ directory. Here is what the content of the
‘C:\Mydata\sample_accounts.txt’ look like:
1234670 11-Sep-04 Z 2000

1234671 12-Sep-04 3000
1234672 13-Sep-04 Z 2500
1234673 14-Sep-04 T 3200
1234674 15-Sep-04 8000
1234675 16-Sep-04 D 2000
1234676 17-Sep-04 4000
1234677 18-Sep-04 S 6000
1234678 19-Sep-04 T 8000
1234679 20-Sep-04 T 2000;
This file can be read into SAS by using an INFILE statement in DATA step
INFILE "C:\Mydata\sample_accounts.txt";
RUN;
Alternately, INFILE statement can also be used to provide reference to the datafile. This is
how it will look like:
filename sacc "D:\Mydata\sample_accounts.txt";

INFILE sacc ;
INPUT Account 1-7 OpenDate $ 9-17 StatusCode $ 21-22 CreditLimit 25-
29;
RUN;
Reading comma delimited data from an external file
Free formatted data that is comma delimited can also be read from an external file. For
example, suppose you have a comma delimited file named sample_accounts.csv (.csv
stands for comma separated values) that is stored in the C:\Mydata directory of your
computer.
Here's what the data in the file look like:
1234670,11-Sep-04,Z,2000
1234671,12-Sep-04,,3000
1234672,13-Sep-04,Z,2500
1234673,14-Sep-04,T,3200
1234674,15-Sep-04,,8000
1234675,16-Sep-04,D,2000
1234676,17-Sep-04,,4000
1234677,18-Sep-04,S,6000
1234678,19-Sep-04,T,8000
1234679,20-Sep-04,T,2000;
We could read the data from sample_accounts.csv into SAS by using the following method:
INFILE "C:\Mydata\sample_accounts.csv" DLM =',';
RUN;
Reading Tab delimited data from an external file
Free formatted data that is TAB delimited can also be read from an external file. For example,
suppose you have a tab delimited file named sample_accounts.txt that is stored in the
‘C:\Mydata’ directory of your computer.
Here's what the data in the file look like:
1234670 11-Sep-04 Z 2000

1234671 12-Sep-04 3000
1234672 13-Sep-04 Z 2500
1234673 14-Sep-04 T 3200
1234674 15-Sep-04 8000
1234675 16-Sep-04 D 2000
1234676 17-Sep-04 4000
1234677 18-Sep-04 S 6000
1234678 19-Sep-04 T 8000
1234679 20-Sep-04 T 2000
We could read the data from ‘sample_accounts.txt’ into SAS by the following method:
INFILE "C:\Mydata\sample_accounts.txt" DLM='09'x
RUN;
Note: If your data is delimited by another character other than a blank or space, the DLM=
option and/or DSD option on the INFILE statement will need to be specified. Some data files
may also require additional INFILE statement options. If record lengths exceed 256 bytes
then add the LRECL= option to the INFILE statement to specify a larger record length (. Also,
TRUNCOVER may need to be specified on the INFILE statement to prevent SAS from
reading more than one record at a time when reading variable length.
TRUNCOVER enables you to read variable-length records when some records are
shorter than coded for on the INPUT statement.
Reading data using formatted input
Discussion on reading data into SAS would be incomplete without mentioning how to read
the formatted input. Many a time the data we get are formatted and its necessary to read
them as it is. This is especially true when we read data containing date and decimal
places from text files.
Note:- With formatted input, an informat follows a variable name and defines how SAS
reads the values of this variable. An informat gives the data type and the field width of an
input value. Informats also read data that are stored in nonstandard form, such as packed
decimal, or numbers that contain special characters such as commas. Have a look at the
following example:
DATA acctinfo;
INPUT acctnum $8. date mmddyy10. amount comma9.;
CARDS;
0074309801/15/2001$1,003.59
1028754301/17/2001$672.05
3320899201/19/2001$702.77
0345900601/19/2001$1,209.61 ;
run;
Note that informats are specified in the INPUT statement to instruct SAS that the data
following should be understood in that form (mmddyy is a date format and comma9. is a
number format with commas to read easily). Also the positions to read are specified. For
various informats for data and numbers please checkout the SAS help or Manual.
Reading data using PROC IMPORT
SAS uses a procedure called PROC IMPORT to read data from spreadsheets, DBMS files
and other delimited files. Suppose you have an excel sheet named Sample_Accounts.xls in
‘C:\mydata’ directory, the following method could be used to read the data into a SAS dataset
called Sample_accounts.
PROC IMPORT OUT= WORK.Sample_accounts

DATAFILE= "C:\Mydata\Sample_Accounts.xls"
DBMS=EXCEL2000 REPLACE;
GETNAMES=YES;
RUN;
By default the first row in excels would be read as column names. PROC IMPORT would be
useful when we need to read the files repetitively for reporting and other analytics purposes.
There are several DBMS specifications available. The below table summarizes that.
Identifier Input Data Source Extension
EXCEL2000 MS Excel Version 2000 .XLS
ACCESS Microsoft Access database .MDB
DBF dBASE file .DBF
WK1 Lotus 1 spreadsheet .WK1
EXCEL Excel Version 4 or 5 spreadsheet .XLS
EXCEL4 Excel Version 4 spreadsheet .XLS
EXCEL5 Excel Version 5 spreadsheet .XLS
EXCEL97 Excel 97 spreadsheet .XLS
DLM delimited file (default delimiter is a blank) .*
CSV delimited file (comma-separated values) .CSV
TAB delimited file (tab-delimited values) .TXT

Data Extraction using PROC SQL
In Consumer finance world, PROC SQL is most widely used to extract data from various data
warehouses. Versatility of PROC SQL facilitates to use the RDBMS specific utilities and
functions that make the data extraction process more efficient. For example we embed Oracle
SQL Plus code within PROC SQL so that data exaction is most optimized by Oracle.
As we have seen earlier, any data should be converted into a SAS dataset before SAS can
carry out any operations on them. The below sample show how to use PROC SQL to extract
data from one of the ORACLE data warehouses. Further, each step is explained for a better
understanding.
PROC SQL;
Connect To ORACLE(User=501115644 Password=mypasswd Buffsize=10000

Path=CDCIT1 Preserve_Comments );
CREATE TABLE acct_status AS SELECT * FROM Connection To ORACLE
(SELECT current_account_nbr AS account_number,

external_status_reason_code AS
ext_rcode,external_status AS estatus,
billing_cycle_day AS billing_cycle_day
FROM
ACCOUNT_DIM
WHERE CLIENT_ID='BROOK BROS'
AND
nvl(EXTERNAL_STATUS_REASON_CODE,'0') <>'98');
Disconnect From ORACLE;
Quit;
In the above example PROC SQL use the connect string “Connect To
ORACLE(User=501115644 Password=mypasswd Buffsize=10000 Path=CDCIT1
Preserve_Comments )” to identify the oracle database (CDCITI) and use the user name and
passwords specified to read data from it. Further, CREATE TABLE statement creates a SAS
Dataset from the output of SELECT statement.
Note that here SELECT that used is an ORACLE SQL PLUS command. (a proprietary
implementation of SQL by Oracle). So one can use all the features of ORACLE while
querying.
When querying a data warehouse, SAS automatically converts the field formats in to SAS
formats. For example, a date field in Oracle will be converted into SAS date and an Oracle
Varchar field will be converted into character.
SAS datasets are used to store large amount of data in consumer finance environments.
Some implementations of SAS Datasets like SAS SPDS are used for even data warehousing
in Consumer Finance. Often we create SAS datasets and store them in shared drives and
folders for future use.
Library references: A common way to read a SAS dataset is to declare the folder that holds
data sets as a SAS library. The below statement creates a SAS Library reference.
Libname rserver '\projects\jkurian\mydata';
data cred_line_new;
set rserver.cred_line;
run;
The above program declares a library called ‘rserver’ and assigns the folder
‘\projects\jkurian\mydata’. Further a dataset ‘cred_line’ is assigned(SET) to a data set
‘cred_line_new’
It is possible that there could be an older version of SAS dataset you need to read from an
external source. In such situation Libname should explicitly declare the dataset version. For
example the below code tells SAS that the files in library rserver is version 6.
Libname rserver v6 '\projects\jkurian\mydata';
Reading EBCDIC files using SAS
In Consumer Finance environment we often come across EBCDIC data files whenever we
deal with credit bureaus data and credit card processors like FDR. EBCDIC is the character
encoding system of mainframes and ASCII is the encoding system on other machines such
as VAX, Windows, UNIX, and Macintosh. These two character sets represent the same data
differently. For instance, the value '50'x is a '&' in EBCDIC, but a 'P' in ASCII. Credit bureaus
like Experian or Equifax and processors like FDR uses mainframe systems and hence their
data files are EBCDIC.
The below example reads an EBCDIC data file named f95_sep from ‘C:\Mydata’.
DATA chm_rdc;
INFILE 'C:\Mydata\f95_sep' lrecl=32760 recfm =s370vb truncover ;
INPUT
@23 CHD_CLIENT_NUMBER $ebcdic4.
@27 CHD_SYSTEM_NO $ebcdic4.
@31 CHD_PRIN_BANK $ebcdic4.
@35 CHD_AGENT_BANK $ebcdic4.
@39 CHD_ACCOUNT_NUMBER $ebcdic16.

@130 CHD_EXTERNAL_STATUS $ebcdic1.
;
run;
Note that @ sign is a column pointer. @39 reads data from column 39.
Please refer the documentation on this at SAS support site for other options.
http://support.sas.com/techsup/technote/ts642.txt
Exercises:
1. Key in the following data into SAS Program Editor and create a SAS dataset. Read the
date as mmddyy10. format and generate a PROC FREQ on the date variable. Convert
the date into MONYY7. Format.
1234670 11-Sep-04 Z 2000

1234671 12-Sep-04 3000
1234672 13-Sep-04 Z 2500
1234673 14-Sep-04 T 3200
1234674 15-Sep-04 8000
1234675 16-Sep-04 D 2000
1234676 17-Sep-04 4000
1234677 18-Sep-04 S 6000
1234678 19-Sep-04 T 8000
1234679 20-Sep-04 T 2000
2. Create a file ‘sample_data.txt’ with the data below and save it in your computer. Read the
file into SAS and create a SAS Dataset. Do a cross tab using PROC FREQ for account
and open_date variables (First and second data fields)
1234670,11-Sep-04,Z,2000
1234671,12-Sep-04,,3000
1234672,13-Sep-04,Z,2500
1234673,14-Sep-04,T,3200
1234674,15-Sep-04,,8000
1234675,16-Sep-04,D,2000
1234676,17-Sep-04,,4000
1234677,18-Sep-04,S,6000
1234678,19-Sep-04,T,8000
1234679,20-Sep-04,T,2000;
Working with Datasets

Objectives of this Chapter:
• Learn about SAS Variables.

• Learn how to LABEL, RENAME and FORMAT data.
• Learn SAS commonly used functions for data processing.
• Learn how to MERGE datasets.
• Learn conditional processing using WHERE, IF/ELSE and DO-END
The previous chapters demonstrated how a simple SAS program looks like and how to read
data from various sources into SAS. We did come across concepts like informats, formats
and some procedures in SAS. Let us discuss some of these concepts in detail so that we
understand some frequently used functions and methods used for data processing – to clean,
format and combine/subset data to make it ready for analytics purposes.
SAS variables
Declaration, assignment, length, keep, drop, array, PROC contents, label, macro variables
and scope of variables.
SAS variables are containers that you create within a program to store and use character
and numeric values. There are two types of variables–Character and Numeric. Characters are
variables of type character that contain alphabetic characters, numeric digits 0 through 9, and
other special characters. Numeric variables
are variables of type numeric that are stored as floating-point numbers, including dates and
times. Yes SAS stores date and time as Numbers.
To simplify, each and every field/column in a SAS dataset is a SAS variable.
These are the questions we will discuss in this chapter around SAS variables.
i) How to create a variable and type?

ii) How to decide length of a variable?
iii) How to keep or drop a variable(s) from a dataset?
iv) What are array variables and how to declare them?
v) How do we know the type of variables in an already created dataset?
vi) How to label and apply format to a variable?
vii) What’s a macro variable and how to declare them?
viii) What’s scope of a variable in a SAS program?
How to create a variable

There are four ways we commonly use to create a variable. 1. Using an assignment
statement 2. Using and INPUT statement 3. Through a LENGTH statement and 4. As a
result of a PROC SQL/PROC IMPORT. There are many other ways too but we limit to these
four types, as they are used 90% of the times.
1. Using an assignment statement
This is the most common form of variable creation. Its not necessary that the variables should
be declared well in advance.
Have a look at the following program:
Data var_test;
id ='JK';
NProducts= 6;
pro_price = 4.555;
tot_cost = NProducts*pro_price;
final_price = tot_cost;
run;
proc print data=var_test ;

run;
proc contents data =var_test;run;
The above program creates a dataset ‘var_test’ with five variables. As we have seen earlier,
each variable will form a column/field in the dataset. ‘Id’ is assigned with a value of ‘JK’.
Nproducts and pro_price are assigned with numbers where latter is a decimal. Tot_cost is
the variable that takes the value of a product of two other variables. And finally, final price
variable is assigned with another variable in the dataset ie tot_cost.
PROC Print prints the data sets and all variables and this is how the output looks like:
pro_ final_
Obs id NProducts price tot_cost price
------------------------------------------------------
1 JK 6 4.55 27.3 27.3
PROC contents is the procedure used to know the data types, length and label of the
variables in a dataset.
-----Alphabetic List of Variables and Attributes-----
# Variable Type Len Pos

---------------------------------------------
2 NProducts Num 8 0
5 final_price Num 8 24
1 id Char 2 32
3 pro_price Num 8 8
4 tot_cost Num 8 16
These outputs together tell us how the variable creations are done and what values, types
and lengths are assigned by SAS. Now let us discuss some general rules of variable
creation by assignment.
In a DATA step, you can create a new variable and assign it a value by using it for the first
time on the left side of an assignment statement. SAS determines the length of a variable
from its first occurrence in the DATA step. The new variable gets the same type and length as
the expression on the right side of the assignment statement.
When the type and length of a variable are not explicitly set, SAS gives the variable a default
type and length as shown in the examples in the following table.
Expression Example Resulting Resulting Explanation

Type of X Length of X
Numeric a=34 Numeric 8 Default numeric length (8

variable variable bytes unless otherwise
x=a; specified)
Character a=’ABCD’ Character 4 Length of source variable

variable variable
x=a;
Character x='ABC'; Character 3 Length of first literal

literal variable encountered
x='ABCDE';
Practical problems: Many a time the length of the variable is not sufficient to hold the value
encountered during the data processing. This will lead to SAS truncating the variable in to the
length of the variable created. This problem can be solved with declaring the length of the
variable before assignment.
Creating variables with INPUT Statement
We have already seen how to use INPUT to read data into variables. We have also seen how
to use SAS informats to tell SAS what kind of data its reading. Below reproduced is one
example to show how its done.
DATA acctinfo;
INPUT acctnum $8. date mmddyy10. amount comma9.;
CARDS;
0074309801/15/2001$1,003.59
1028754301/17/2001$672.05
3320899201/19/2001$702.77
0345900601/19/2001$1,209.61
;
run;
proc contents data =acctinfo;run;
Output :
Alphabetic List of Variables and Attributes

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1 acctnum Char 8 16
3 amount Num 8 8
2 date Num 8 0
Here INPUT statement specifies the data type next to the variable and also how many
positions (length).
Specifying a New Variable in a LENGTH Statement
In practical situations, when we create new variables, the length of the variable needs to be
explicitly defined. For example, when we read two character values successively into a
variable, SAS assigns the length of the variable as that of the first. Suppose the second value
is longer than the first, SAS reads only up to the length of first variable. So it’s a good
programming practice to declare the variable with a LENGTH statement so that we are sure it
can hold all kinds of values the data has.
You can use the LENGTH statement to create a variable and set the length of the variable.
Let us modify our earlier example:
Data var_test;
length id $ 10;
length NProducts 4;
id ='JK';
NProducts= 6;
pro_price = 4.55;
run;
Output is :
Alphabetic List of Variables and Attributes

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2 NProducts Num 4 24
5 final_price Num 8 16
1 id Char 10 28
3 pro_price Num 8 0
4 tot_cost Num 8 8
Output shows that now ID variable is a 10-character field so it can hold more characters.
Without this explicit declaration, ID field can hold only two characters, as automatically
assigned by SAS.
For character variables, you must allow for the longest possible value in the first statement
that uses the variable, because you cannot change the length with a subsequent LENGTH
statement within the same DATA step. The maximum length of any character variable in the
SAS System is 32,767 bytes. For numeric variables, you can change the length of the
variable by using a subsequent LENGTH statement.
Creating variables through PROC SQL and PROC IMPORT
We always extract data from data warehouses or import data using SAS import utilities and
we find the dataset is created with all columns with various formats. Here what happens
during the process is SAS identifies the best format for the database fields you are extracting
and apply the same to the datasets. PROC SQL provides more flexibility in formatting the
variables. This is discussed separately in the appendix-II.
KEEP and DROP statements.
KEEP and DROP statements are used often to control the number of variables (fields) read
into and output into the datasets. During the data processing we create several variables but
need to save only select ones in the final dataset.
If you want to restrict the number of columns in output data set, use the following method.
This will ensure that output dataset is created with required variables only.
Data target_data (keep = var1 var2 var3 etc);

Set base_data;
Run
Alternately you can specify the first statement as follows:
Data target_data ;
Set base_data;
keep = var1 var2 var3 ;
Run
If you are reading a big dataset into SAS and require only a few variables from it, use the
following statements in the program.
Data target_data ;
Set base_data((keep = var1 var2 var3 etc);
Run;
In the first case, SAS reads the entire data set base_data, even though you only intend to use
three variables. In the second case, SAS reads from disk only the three variables you intend
to keep. Please note that we have to use such efficient methods to restrict the data read into
the system to optimize the system resources such as SASWORK and shared drives.
The same way DROP statement can also be specified based on the data requirement of the
user.
Array Variables
Unlike other programming languages, SAS array variable is a set of similar variables grouped
together with a name in an ARRAY statement. We use arrays very often when we work with
datasets that are arranged as a Time Series. Let us look at simple program to understand
Data array_test;
Set weight_data;
array weight{50} wt1-wt50;
do i=1 to 50;
if weight{i}=999 then weight{i}= .;
end;
run;
As we have seen earlier one of the basic use of array is to group similar variables . In the
above example ‘weight_data has weight measured at fifty different growth stages and
wherever data is missing that data point is updated with 999. Assume it’s a very large data set
and we want to replace all 999 with a ‘.’ for missing. If we are to do this data step, we will
have to write 50 statements ( if wt1 =999 then wt1=. ; like that for each column) . Using array
variable we can simplify this.
Line 3: Here ‘array’ is the key word that tells SAS the following name (weight) is an array.
The closed bracket {50} specifies the number of elements in the array followed by the values
of array elements*wt1, wt2, wt3….wt50). For example weight{40} = ‘wt40’
Line 4: Do loop 1 to 50 to hold the record to scan through 50 different fields specified.
Line 5: Remember weight{1} will have a value wt1 and that field will be evaluated in the
following IF condition to check whether it has a value of 999. Similarly when i=2, weight {2}
will have a value of wt2. Like this 50 times the loop is executed for each row of data and the
update is made for fifty fields (columns)
Line:6 Ending the loop .
End of the execution, all the fields are evaluated and updated with ‘.’ for 999.
Now think about substituting fields with missing. Values with some other value.
Time Series Example
Now let us look at an example to know the way array is used in our environment (This
program does not run as it requires some datasets)
Data Balance_due;
set TS_49;
array st_month {6} stmonth15 stmonth25 stmonth35 stmonth45 stmonth55;

array bal_due {6} baldue15 baldue25 baldue35 baldue45 baldue55 ;
do i=1 to 5;
Statement_month =st_month (i);
balance_due = bal_due(i);
output;
end;
run;
Proc summary data = Balance_due;

class Statement_month;
var balance_due ;
run;
The above program reads a dataset (TS_49) where the variables are arranged in a time
series format. (For example, baldue15 stands for balance due for the month of Jan 2005 and
so on) The user wants to see the balance due for all accounts by statement month for 5
specific months , using SAS ARRAY (s)he could achieve that easily. Further, (s)he could use
PROC summary to do the summarization as data is now in a format that PROC Summary
understands.
No let us look at the ARRAY statement.
array st_month {5} stmonth15 stmonth25 stmonth35 stmonth45 stmonth55
Here ‘array’ is the key word that tells SAS the following name (st_month) is an array. The
closed bracket (5) specifies the number of elements in the array followed by the values of
array elements. For example st_month(5) = ‘stmonth55’
In other words, ARRAY help us to group a set of variables so that programming could be
made short and flexible. If we need to do the same action repetitively on same group of
variables, declaring an array would solve the same.
Variable LABELs
A SAS Label describes a variable. When labels are assigned in the data step they are
available for all procedures that use that data set. When we produce reports we could print
labels instead of variable names.
Let us modify our earlier example:
Data var_test;
length id $ 10;
length NProducts 4;
id ='JK';
NProducts= 6;
pro_price = 4.55;
LABEL id ="Vendor Name"

NProducts ="Number of Products"
pro_price = "Product Price"
tot_cost ="Total Cost"
final_price ="Final Price"
;
run;
Let us look at the output of PROC Contents:
-----Alphabetic List of Variables and Attributes-----
# Variable Type Len Pos Label

-------------------------------------------------------------------
2 NProducts Num 4 24 Number of Products
5 final_price Num 8 16 Final Price
1 id Char 10 28 Vendor Name
3 pro_price Num 8 0 Product Price
4 tot_cost Num 8 8 Total Cost
The PROC output now show ‘Label’, which gives more information about the variable.
When you use PROC PRINT or some other Procedures you can print the labels instead of
variable names. For example the code below will print labels for the variables in var_test.
Proc print data = var_test label;
run;
Additionally, the labels can be created with PROC FORMAT procedure, which is not
discussed in this guide.
Variable FORMATs
A format is an instruction that SAS uses to write data values. You use formats to control the
written appearance of data values. Note that a format does not change the original value of a
variable. Since formats are primarily used to format output, we will look at how we can use
existing SAS internal formats using the FORMAT statement in PROCs and Data steps.
The following example shows how to use a format statement in a data step.
data format_test;
num_test = 1250;
today =today();
dollar_amt =13400.5;
Name = 'J KURIAN';
format num_test words40. name $reverj7. dollar_amt dollar10.2
today monyy7.;
;
run;
proc print data = format_test;run;
The above example formats four variables – num_test with words40., name with reverj7.,
dollar_amt with dollar10.2 and today with monyy7. formats. Please have a look at the
following table to understand what each format does to the display of the variable. The below
list is not exhaustive- Do consult the SAS manual for a complete list of formats.
Syntax for the format statement is:
Format <variable name> <format name> ;
There are three categories of formats. Character, date and time and numeric. Lists of
frequently used formats are provided below.
Category Format Description
Character $CHARw. Writes standard character data
$QUOTEw. Writes data values that are enclosed in double quotation

marks
$REVERJw. Writes character data in reverse order and preserves blanks
$UPCASEw. Converts character data to uppercase
$w. Writes standard character data
Date and DATEw. Writes date values in the form ddmmmyy or ddmmmyyyy
Time
DATETIMEw.d Writes datetime values in the form ddmmmyy:hh:mm:ss.ss
DAYw. Writes date values as the day of the month
DDMMYYw. Writes date values in the form ddmmyy or ddmmyyyy
DDMMYYxw. Writes date values in the form ddmmyy or ddmmyyyy with a

specified separator
MMYYxw. Writes date values as the month and the year and separates
them with a character
MONNAMEw. Writes date values as the name of the month
MONTHw. Writes date values as the month of the year

MONYYw. Writes date values as the month and the year in the form
mmmyy or mmmyyyy
QTRw. Writes date values as the quarter of the year
QTRRw. Writes date values as the quarter of the year in Roman

numerals
WEEKDATEw. Writes date values as the day of the week and the date in the
form day-of-week, month-name dd, yy (or yyyy)
WEEKDAYw. Writes date values as the day of the week
WORDDATEw. Writes date values as the name of the month, the day, and
the year in the form month-name dd, yyyy
YEARw. Writes date values as the year
YYMMxw. Writes date values as the year and month and separates
them with a character
Numeric BESTw. SAS chooses the best notation
COMMAw.d Writes numeric values with commas and decimal points
COMMAXw.d Writes numeric values with periods and commas
DOLLARw.d Writes numeric values with dollar signs, commas, and

decimal points
FLOATw.d Generates a native single-precision, floating-point value by

multiplying a number by 10 raised to the dth power
NUMXw.d Writes numeric values with a comma in place of the decimal

point
SSNw. Writes Social Security numbers
w.d Writes standard numeric data one digit per byte
WORDFw. Writes numeric values as words with fractions that are shown
numerically
WORDSw. Writes numeric values as words
SAS Functions in DATA steps
A SAS function performs a computation or manipulation on variables (arguments) and returns

a value. Most functions use arguments supplied by the user. SAS functions are mainly used
in DATA step programming statements.
data function_test;
Max_var= max(100,101);
Length_var = length(Max_var);
This_month = month(today());
run;
proc print;run;
The syntax of a function is :
Function-name (argument-1, . . .,argument-n>)
In the above example, we have shown how MAX, LENGTH and MONTH functions are used.
The table below has some frequently used functions in our programs.
Function Name Description

LENGTH Returns the length of an argument
LOWCASE Converts all letters in an argument to lowercase
SCAN Selects a given word from a character
expression
SUBSTR (right of =) Extracts a substring from an argument
UPCASE Converts all letters in an argument to uppercase
DATEPART Extracts the date from a SAS datetime value
DAY Returns the day of the month from a SAS date
value
INTCK Returns the integer number of time intervals in a
given time span
INTNX Advances a date, time, or datetime value by a
given interval, and returns a date, time, or
datetime value
MONTH Returns the month from a SAS date value
QTR Returns the quarter of the year from a SAS date
value
TODAY Returns the current date as a SAS date value
YEAR Returns the year from a SAS date value
MAX Returns the largest value
MEAN Returns the arithmetic mean (average)
MIN Returns the smallest value
SUM Returns the sum of the nonmissing arguments
CALL SYMPUT Assigns DATA step information to a macro
variable
LOG Returns the natural (base e) logarithm
MOD Returns the remainder value
SQRT Returns the square root of a value
RANUNI Returns a random variate from a uniform
distribution
INPUT Returns the value produced when a SAS
expression that uses a specified informat
expression is read
LAG Returns values from a queue
PUT Returns a value using a specified format
ZIPSTATE Converts ZIP codes to state postal codes
CEIL Returns the smallest integer that is greater than
or equal to the argument
FLOOR Returns the largest integer that is less than or
equal to the argument
ROUND Rounds to the nearest round-off unit
TRUNC Truncates a numeric value to a specified length

VLABEL Returns the label that is associated with the
specified variable
VNAME Returns the name of the specified variable
VTYPE Returns the type (character or numeric) of the
specified variable
MERGE –Combining datasets
One of the features frequently used while SAS programming is combining one or many
datasets. For example to combine the application data with performance data we use
MERGE utility in SAS.
Most of the time a match merging is done on SAS datasets. For example, if we are interested
in the performance of the accounts that are opened only in Jan 2004, we try to match only
those accounts while doing the performance data merging. In consumer Finance, account
number or Account Key is usually used for match merging.
Let us look at the following examples. We have two record sets that have information about
credit lines of the accounts. Intial_cl holds data for all initial credit lines assigned and new_cl
has all increased credit lines. Now we need to combine these into one dataset so that it will
show the latest credit lines for each account.
DATA intial_cl;
INPUT account credit_limit;
DATALINES;
1002 2000
1003 4000
1004 3000
;
DATA new_cl;
DATALINES;
1002 3000
1004 5000
;
DATA credit_limit;
MERGE intial_cl new_cl;
BY account;
RUN;
PROC PRINT;
RUN;
Output looks like as follows:
credit_
Obs account limit
1 1002 3000
2 1003 4000
3 1004 5000
So a simple merge statement combined the datasets and the BY statement made sure that its
updated with the latest information.
What if we put ‘new_cl’ data set first in the MERGE statement? Note that the data overwritten
on the first dataset.
Let us introduce some more complexity to reflect the way we use MERGE .
DATA credit_limit;
MERGE intial_cl(in=a) new_cl(in=b) ;
BY account;
IF a and b;
RUN;
The above data step introduces a conditional processing using IF . Also a handle to the
dataset is declared after the dataset name (in=a, in=b) . Using these handles we can combine
the datasets conditionally.
‘IF a and b’ combines the dataset if the BY statement finds a match in the second dataset.
Only those records with a match are combined. This is different from the first example where
all records are output into the resultant dataset. Output looks like as follows
Account Sample
credit_
Obs account limit
1 1002 3000
2 1004 5000
There are various combinations that suits to various requirements
If a ; = combines the data with data updated for all accounts in the first dataset
If b; = combines the data with data updated for all accounts in the second data set
If a or b; combines both the datasets with data updated into the first dataset specified (Outer
join)
Also it is possible to merge more than two data sets at a time. PROC SQL is also used to
merge datasets. Please go through the Appendix-I for more details.
Conditional Processing with WHERE, IF-ELSE, DO-END

When working with data we come across situations where data need to be filtered or we may
have to apply several conditions before we have the final data for analysis or modeling. For
example, When we want to report out the number of active accounts and total $ outstanding,
we need to subset the entire data so that only accounts that are active are included. Suppose
the active definition says “ An active account is an account where current $ outstanding is
greater than 100 and Status_code is not Z”. Let us look at an example now.
DATA account_perf;
INPUT account current_os status_code $;
cards;
1002 300 A
1003 20 A
1004 1200 .
1005 800 Z
1006 450 D
1007 560 Z
1008 450 A
1009 900 C
1110 300 C
;run;
Data perf;
set account_perf;
where current_os >100 and status_code ne 'Z';
run;
Here dataset ‘perf’ is a subset of account_perf. Conditions behind creating this subset were
the activity definitions we mentioned before. Note that WHERE statement is used to evaluate
two variables with and ‘and’ condition. The same way we can use OR also.
IF can also be used instead of WHERE . (You can use IF current_os >100 and status_code
ne 'Z';). But WHERE is more efficient when we do the sub-setting.
IF ELSE conditions are commonly used to flag accounts or create new variables based on
certain conditions. Suppose we need to flag the accounts into Good and Bad based on
certain conditions, IF/ELSE can be used. The example below shows the usage of IF/ELSE
Data perf;
set account_perf;
length status $20.;
if status_code eq 'Z' then status= "Bad-Charged Off";
else if status_code eq 'C' then status = "Cancelled";
else Status= "Good Account";
run;
Dataset used is same as the previous example. Here we are categorizing the data into three
segments. Bad Charged off, Cancelled and Good Accounts. A new variable (status) is
created based on the condition.
current_ status_
Obs account os code status
1 1002 300 A Good Account

3 1004 1200 Good Account
4 1005 800 Z Bad-Charged Off
5 1006 450 D Good Account
6 1007 560 Z Bad-Charged Off
8 1009 900 C Cancelled
9 1110 300 C Cancelled
When there is multiple processing done conditionally, then DO-END loop is used. For
example we want to categorize the good and bad accounts and also want to compute the
write-off amount based on a same condition ie Status_code =Z, this can be achieved using a
DO-END loop. Let us have a look at the example below.
Data perf;
set account_perf;
length status $20.;
if status_code eq 'Z' then do ;

status= "Bad-Charged Off";
wo_amount = current_os ;
end;
else do;
Status= "Good Account";
wo_amount = 0 ;
end;
run;
proc print ;run;
The output looks like the following:
current_ status_
Obs account os code status wo_amount
1 1002 300 A Good Account 0

3 1004 1200 Good Account 0
4 1005 800 Z Bad-Charged Off 800
5 1006 450 D Good Account 0
6 1007 560 Z Bad-Charged Off 560
8 1009 900 C Good Account 0
9 1110 300 C Good Account 0

Now let us summarize:
WHERE, IF-ELSE, DO-END are used for conditional processing in SAS data steps. WHERE
and IF conditions are also used in many SAS PROCs to subset data and filter out unwanted
data.
Exercises:
Create two data sets as showed below and try out the following combination of merging. Write
down your observations on how each merging worked.
DATA intial_cl;
DATALINES;
1002 2000
1003 4000
1004 3000
;
DATA new_cl;
DATALINES;
1002 3000
1004 5000
1005 2500
;
DATA credit_limit;
BY account;
IF a ;
RUN;
PROC PRINT;
RUN;
DATA credit_limit;
BY account;
IF b ;
RUN;
PROC PRINT;
RUN;
DATA credit_limit;
BY account;
IF a or b ;
RUN;
PROC PRINT;
RUN;
DATA credit_limit;
BY account;
IF a=b ;
RUN;
PROC PRINT;
RUN;
Procedures for Data Insights

Objectives of this chapter:
To learn frequently used procedures in Consumer Finance environment. These procedures

are used to understand the data we work with as well as to bring out business insights. We
will discuss PROC DATASETS, PROC PRINT, PROC SORT, PROC TRANSPOSE, PROC
DOWNLOAD, PROC FREQ, PROC MEANS and PROC GPLOT in this chapter.
PROC DATASETS
PROC DATASETS is a utility procedure that helps to manage the SAS datasets in various
libraries. The multi-user environments are constrained by the system resources like SAS
Workspace or the shared folders. To remove unnecessary files and manage the datasets,
Proc Datasets is often used in the main programs.
With PROC DATASETS, you can
• Delete SAS files

• List the SAS files that are contained in a SAS library
• Copy SAS files from one SAS library to another
• Rename SAS files
• List the attributes of a SAS data set, information such as the date the data were last
modified, whether the data are compressed, whether the data are indexed etc.
• Append SAS data sets
• Create and delete indexes on SAS data sets
The example below demonstrates three frequently used features of Proc Contents – Delete,
copy and Rename.
libname mylib 'D:\mydata';
DATA mylib.intial_cl;
DATALINES;
1002 2000
1003 4000
1004 3000
;
DATA mylib.new_cl;
DATALINES;
1002 3000
1004 5000
1005 2500
;
proc datasets library=mylib details;

change new_cl=brand_new_cl;
delete intial_cl;
copy in=mylib out =work; select brand_new_cl;
run;
Line 1: specifying the library to list the detail (filenames and attributes)
Line 2: change the name ‘new_cl’ into ‘brand_new_cl’
Line 3: delete intial_cl from mylib
Line 4: copy from ‘mylib’ library to ‘work’ library the file specified in select statement
(brand_new_cl)
PROC PRINT
Proc PRINT is used to understand how the data looks and also for a variety of reporting
purposes. Proc print in conjunction with ODS features can produce impressive reports.
PROC Print has various options and features to control the display, filter data/variables and to
do additional computation on the data.
When we work with data, it’s a good practice to have a look at a sample data extract. If the
dataset is large, we would want to restrict the number of column and rows in our print report.
The below example show how to do that.
Assume that ‘statement’ is a dataset with 100 variables and 1 Million records. We want to see
any 10 observations and 5 variables viz. account_code, current_balance, credit_limit,
status_code and fico_score. This is how we do it.
Proc print data=statement (obs=10);

title 'Sample records-Statement';
var account_code current_balance credit_limit status_code
fico_score;
run;
Line 1: tells SAS the dataset name. Also restricts the number of observations printed through
OBS statement.
Line 2: specifies a title for the report.
Line 3: Specifies the variables to be printed

What we have seen is a basic version of PROC PRINT. Some of the features we use with
are: BY statement, SUM statement and PAGE statement. Here are some examples on how
to use them.
BY statement: Produces a separate section of the report for each BY group.
PAGEBY: Controls page ejects that occur before a page is full. Computes the totals by page,
if specified.
SUM: Computes the total for the specified variables
DATA account_perf;
INPUT account current_os ext_status_code $ int_status_code $;
cards;
1002 300 A C
1003 20 A C
1004 1200 A D
1005 800 Z A
1006 450 Z A
1007 560 Z A
1008 450 A D
1009 900 Z D
1110 300 Z D
;
run;
proc sort data = account_perf;

by ext_status_code;
run;
Proc print data = account_perf;

Title "Example for SUM, BY and PAGEBY Statements";
by ext_status_code ;
pageby ext_status_code;
sum current_os;
run;
Note that BY statement in Proc Print require the data to be sorted by the variables in BY
statement. PROC SORT procedure should be used to do the sorting prior to the print.
PROC SORT
PROC SORT is a very useful utility we often use when work with data and procedures. PROC
SORT sorts the variable(s) in a dataset in an ascending or descending order. Additionally it
performs some other operations like deleting the duplicate rows and ordering the variables for
certain procedures. When we do the data cleaning, PROC SORT is used to remove all the
duplicate records or duplicate observation. In the example shown below, the accounts are
appearing multiple times (duplicate and non-duplicate rows) and we want to keep the record
last updated only. Using PROC SORT we can filter those accounts and create a clean SAS
dataset.
Let us create a SAS dataset to demonstrate some of the capabilities of PROC SORT.
DATA statement;
INPUT account current_os ext_status_code $ Dt_updt mmddyy10. ;
format dt_updt mmddyy10.;
cards;
1002 300 A 03/15/2005
1003 20 A 03/15/2005
1003 20 A 03/15/2005
1004 1200 A 03/15/2005
1005 800 Z 03/15/2005
1006 450 Z 03/15/2005
1007 560 Z 03/15/2005
1002 300 Z 03/25/2005
1002 300 Z 03/25/2005
1009 900 Z 03/15/2005
1110 300 Z 03/15/2005
1004 1200 Z 03/26/2005
;
run;
The DATA step above creates a dataset with 12 records. Note that account number 1003 and
1002 have duplicate repords. Accounts 1002 and 1004 are repeated but they are not
duplicated. In order to do any analysis or reporting, we should first clean this dataset to
make sure no doble couting is done on measurement variables. Such issues are common
with statement table as the customer can request to change the billing cycle for their credit
card statements or problems with data loading at ETL stage.
This is how we use a PROC SORT statement:
proc sort data = statement out=statement1 nodup;

by account descending Dt_updt;
run;
Line 1: specifies the data to read in and ‘out’ statement specifies the dataset to be created
after sorting. ’NOHUP’ is a keyword tells SAS to remove all records that are identical and
keep only the first one.
Line 2: BY statement specifies the variables to be used for sorting. Here account variable is
sorted in an ascending order (default) and Dt_updt is sorted in a descending order. Our
objective is to keep the record last updated so when SAS deletes the duplicates it keeps the
first record in the order sorted, and in this case ‘descending’ sort keyword brings the latest
record first.
Notice that we still have multiple records for couple of accounts. To remove them we use the
‘nodupkey’ keyword as follows:
proc sort data = statement1 out=statement2 nodupkey;

by account ;
run;
Line 1: ‘nodupkey’ keyword is specified to instruct SAS to remove all the records appearing
repetitively for the variables in BY statement.
Line 2: BY statement specifies the variables where SAS should look for duplicates. If an
account is repeated twice the fist record in the sort order is kept and rest are deleted from the
output dataset.
So with these two sort steps we have a clean dataset with only latest information. It is
possible to specify multiple variables in the BY statement and it is possible to control the order
(ascending or descending) of the individual variables while performing the sorting.
Some Procedures use BY statements to categorize the output – For example, PROC PRINT,
PROC SUMMARY, PROC UNIVARIATE. Make sure you sort the data by BY variables
before you perform a procedure on it.
TIP: PROC SORT is very time/resource consuming process in Consumer Finance

environment as we typically work with millions of records. We don’t have to sort data for
PROC SUMMARY, unless it has a BY statement.
PROC TRANSPOSE
The TRANSPOSE procedure creates an output data set by restructuring the values in a SAS
data set, transposing selected variables into observations. It converts the row elements to
columns.
Let us create a dataset to demonstrate an example:
DATA statement_summary;
INPUT Perfmonth date9. tot_accounts newacct actives
current_balance;
format Perfmonth MONYY7. ;
label
Perfmonth ="Performance Month"
tot_accounts ="Total Number of Accounts"
actives= " #Active Accounts"
newacct ="# New Accounts"
current_balance ="$ Current Balances";
cards;
01-Apr-03 8860303 86521 1366811 32932422.08
01-May-03 8947743 90272 1376739 30994371.23
01-Jun-03 9035228 90436 1397670 31551717.63
01-Jul-03 9123510 92157 1424469 31788023.01
01-Aug-03 9199904 79118 1417949 32329068.83
01-Sep-03 9289735 92682 1369723 33772968.41
01-Oct-03 9390095 10294 1371610 34349188.42
01-Nov-03 9493607 10673 1383296 35398736.71
01-Dec-03 9583579 93288 1427501 36525256.12
01-Jan-04 9643529 63447 1432429 39782001.88
01-Feb-04 9706194 66283 1340457 38625107.74
01-Mar-04 9723757 20907 1294083 37758060.3
;run;
proc print data = statement_summary label;run;
This is how the output looks like . Now we want to produce a report that displays al metric in a
time series format ie. you want the Performance months as columns . Then it becomes a
typical case where we use PROC Transpose.
Total
Performance Number of # New #Active $ Current
Obs Month Accounts Accounts Accounts Balances
1 APR2003 8860303 86521 1366811 32932422.08

2 MAY2003 8947743 90272 1376739 30994371.23
3 JUN2003 9035228 90436 1397670 31551717.63
4 JUL2003 9123510 92157 1424469 31788023.01
5 AUG2003 9199904 79118 1417949 32329068.83
6 SEP2003 9289735 92682 1369723 33772968.41
7 OCT2003 9390095 10294 1371610 34349188.42
8 NOV2003 9493607 10673 1383296 35398736.71
9 DEC2003 9583579 93288 1427501 36525256.12
10 JAN2004 9643529 63447 1432429 39782001.88
11 FEB2004 9706194 66283 1340457 38625107.74
12 MAR2004 9723757 20907 1294083 37758060.30
This how we use a PROC TRANSPOSE
proc transpose data =statement_summary out = ts_statement;

id Perfmonth;
var tot_accounts newacct actives current_balance ;
run;
Line 1: Specifies the dataset and output dataset – Proc Transpose does not print the results
Line 2: Spcifies the field to be transposed through an ‘ID’ statement.
Line 3: Specifies the variables to be transposed
This is how it looks if we print a part of the data transposed (ts_statement)
Obs _NAME_ _LABEL_ APR2003 MAY2003 JUN2003
1 tot_accounts Tot Number of Accounts 860303 8947743 9035228

2 newacct # New Accounts 86521 90272. 90436

3 actives #Active Accounts 136681 1376739 397670
4 current_balance $ Current Balances 3293242 30994371 31551717
Note that two variables are created by SAS ‘_Name_ ‘ and ‘_Label_ ‘ . This field has all
variable names and their respective labels so that we can identify them. Variable we specified
in ID statement is now converted into columns.
PROC Transpose is often used to convert the variables into a time series format as shown
above. It is possible to use a ‘BY’ statement in a PROC Transpose to transpose them in a
grouped manner. When we work with SAS programs for automation, there are several
instances we would do a PROC transpose to reshape the data in to a structure that helps in
automation.
PROC DOWNLOAD
PROC DOWNLOAD is used to download data from a remote server, when you are working
with SAS remote submit session. SAS remote sign on to a Unix server enables the user to
compose and submit the program in their windows clients and see the SAS log and Output in
their workstation. When you are submitting a program to remote server, the Sas datasets are
created in the remote server (Stoner Unix server for example). PROC Download enables to
download the data into your local windows folders.
Let us look at a program :
libname loc 'c:\datasets';

rsubmit;
libname user01 '/projects/cmart'
options obs =100;
Proc downlod data = user01.cmart_auth out = loc.cmart_auth;
run;
endrsubmit;
The above program assumes that a signon to a remote server is already estabilished. There
are two librariesdeclared – ‘loc’ is a local SAS library and ‘user01’ is a remote Sas library .
Options obs=100 restricts the number of observations downloaded to 100. OBS=Max should
be used if the intention is to download the complete dataset.
PROC FREQ
PROC FREQ is used to produce frequency counts and cross tabulation tables for specified
variables/field. It can also produce the statistics like Chi Square to analyze relationships
among variables.
As a good practice, at a data processing stage we use PROC Freq on categorical fields to
understand the data and their frequency distributions. For example a cross tabulation table of
FICO score segments to External Status code will tell us how the accounts are distributed
across various score segments and statuses. PROC FREQ offers various features to control
the output and the way the tables are produced. Let us start with an example to understand
them better.
DATA account_perf;
INPUT client $ account current_os ext_status_code $ int_status_code
$;
cards;
Cmart 1002 300 A C
Cmart 1003 20 A C
JCP 1004 1200 A D
JCP 1005 800 Z A
GIA 1006 450 Z A
GIA 1007 560 Z A
JCP 1008 450 A D
GIA 1009 900 . D
Cmart 1110 300 Z D
;
run;
proc sort DATA = account_perf;
BY client;
run;
proc freq DATA = account_perf;

TITLE 'Frequency of External Status Code by Client';
TABLES ext_status_code* int_status_code /missing norow nocol
nopercent;
BY client;
WHERE client ne 'JCP';
LABEL client ='Client Name';
run;
The data step creates a SAS dataset named ‘account_perf’. Proc sort is used to sort the data
by client as we use a ‘BY’ statement in PROC FREQ that follows.
Line 1 and 2 in PROC FREQ statement tells SAS which dataset to use and the title of the
output.
Line 3 specifies SAS to generate a cross-tab of External status code and Internal Status code
trough a TABLES statement. There are several options specified like missing, norow, nocol
and nopercent to control the way statistics are displayed. A standard FREQ output shows a
column, row and cell percentages.
Line 4: BY Statement specifies the grouping criteria. In this case, frequencies are computed
for each client group.
Line 5: WHERE statement allows the conditional processing. Here all clients other than ‘JCP’
are taken for computation.
Line 5: Labels the output. Its also possible to use FORMAT statements to manipulate the
display.
Here is a list of commonly used options with TABLES statement
Nocol - suppresses printing of column percentages of a cross tab.

Norow - suppresses printing of row percentages of a cross tab.
Nopercent - suppresses printing of cell percentages of a cross tab.
Missing - interprets missing values as non-missing and includes them in % and statistics
calculations.
List - prints two-way to n-way tables in a list format rather than as cross tabulation tables
Chisq - performs several chi-square tests.
Now let us look at the following requirements:
i) The user wants the output not to be printed but to be put into a SAS data set for further
processing. ii) Wants to order the values to be changed to ascending order of frequency
counts (highest occurring first) and iii) The output to be listed instead of cross-tab.
The following program block does the job:
proc freq DATA = account_perf order=freq;

Title 'Frequency of External Status Code by Client';
TABLES int_status_code*ext_status_code / list out = perf_freq ;
WHERE client ne 'JCP';
label client ='Client Name';
run;
At line : 1- please note that ‘order =freq’ is specified to tell SAS to order the output by
descending frequency count
Line: 3- ‘list’ keyword is used to tell SAS to list the output and not cross-tabulate.
‘Out=perf_freq’ specifies the output dataset name to store the frequency output.
To sum up, PROC FREQ is a very useful and the most used of the SAS procedures. In
Consumer Finance environment, PROC FREQ is used mainly in the data preparation stage
and for reporting. Frequency ordering, list and output data creation using OUT are often used
options.
PROC MEANS
The PROC MEANS produces descriptive statistics for numeric variables. By default, the
MEANS procedure reports N (the number of non-missing observations), Mean, Std Dev
(Standard Deviation), Minimum and Maximum. We can request additional statistics through
the options. Let us start with a simple example:
proc means DATA = account_perf ;

Title 'Summary of Current Outstanding' ;
BY client ;
var current_os;
label client ='Client Name'
current_os= 'Current Outstanding' ;
run;
Line:3-Tells SAS to group the values in client field and produce the statistics separately.
Line:4- Specifies the variable for which the statistics are to be computed. Here current_os is a
field in the dataset given and that contain data for current Dollar outstanding for each account
in the dataset.
Now we want to request more statistic like variance, range, sum, mean, median, minimum
and maximum this is how we do it.
proc means DATA = account_perf var range sum mean median min max ;
Title 'Summary Statistics of Current Outstanding’;
var current_os;
run;
Suppose we want to create a SAS dataset with the statistics computed for further processing,
this is how we instruct SAS.
proc means DATA = account_perf var sum mean ;

Title 'Summary of Current Outstanding' ;
var current_os;
by client;
output out = perf_mean n = count sum = total mean = avg ;
run;
The above program requests three statistics are to be put into the output dataset ‘perf_mean’.
Total count, sum and mean for each client (BY Client) are created as count, total and avg
fields, respectively, in the output dataset.
To Sum up, PROC MEANS is used to understand the numeric variables, their distributions
and other statistical characteristics. Options like BY and CLASS statements enable the users
to look at them by segmenting into various categories. Just like we use FREQ on categorical
and character fields, Means is used on numeric data. Additionally, PROC Means is used for
summarizing large datasets with a variety of statistics for reporting purposes. In this way it
can be used as a substitute for PROC SUMMARY.
PROC GPLOT
PROC GPLOT is used to produce the graphical output in SAS. PROC GPLOT is considered
as an improvement over the PROC PLOT procedure as it provides good quality presentation
compared to simple PROC PLOT outputs.
PROC GPLOT produces a variety of two-dimensional graphs including
• Simple scatter plots

• Overlay plots in which multiple sets of data points display on one set of axes
• Plots against a second vertical axis
• Bubble plots
• Logarithmic plots (controlled by the AXIS statement).
In conjunction with the SYMBOL statement the GPLOT procedure can produce join plots,
high-low plots, needle plots, and plots with simple or spline-interpolated lines. The SYMBOL
statement can also display regression lines on scatter plots.
The GPLOT procedure is useful for
• Displaying long series of data, showing trends and patterns

• Interpolating between data points
• Extrapolating beyond existing data with the display of regression lines and confidence
limits.
The dataset and the program below gives a good understanding about the GPLOT options
and how the graphs are created.
DATA account_perf;
INPUT client $ account fico_seg $ current_os tot_payment
ext_status_code $ ;
cards;
Cmart 1002 401-500 300 100 A C
Cmart 1003 501-600 200 150 A C
Cmart 1004 601-700 1200 180 A D
Cmart 1005 701-800 800 190 Z A
Cmart 1006 801-900 450 200 Z A
GIA 1007 401-500 560 210 Z A
GIA 1008 501-600 450 180 A D
GIA 1009 601-700 900 145 A D
GIA 1110 701-800 300 148 Z D
;
run;
proc sort data = account_perf;

by client;run;
PART-I
GOPTIONS
RESET = global
GUNIT = PCT
CBACK = BLACK
CTEXT = WHITE
/* DEVICE = GIF*/
FONTRES = PRESENTATION
HTITLE = 3
HTEXT = 2
HSIZE = 8 IN
VSIZE = 6 IN
INTERPOL = JOIN
NOBORDER;
PART-II
SYMBOL1 VALUE = DOT COLOR = LIME HEIGHT = 2.5 WIDTH = 2;

SYMBOL2 VALUE = SQUARE COLOR = VIPK HEIGHT = 2.5 WIDTH = 2;
SYMBOL3 VALUE = TRIANGLE COLOR = STRO HEIGHT = 2.5 WIDTH = 2;
PART-III
AXIS1 LABEL = ('Current O/S')

COLOR = WHITE
LENGTH = 60
MAJOR = (NUMBER = 5)
MINOR = NONE ;
AXIS2 LABEL = ('FICO SEGMENTS')
COLOR = WHITE
LENGTH = 85
MAJOR = (NUMBER = 5)
MINOR = NONE;
PART-IV
PROC GPLOT DATA = Account_perf;

by client;
PLOT current_os*fico_seg tot_payment*fico_seg/overlay haxis=axis1
vaxis=axis2;
RUN;
GOPTIONS: When working with GPLOT, the first step is to become familiar with the
GOPTIONS. The purpose of the GOPTIONS statement is to apply levels of specific options to
graphs created in the session or to override specific default values. It can be located
anywhere within your SAS program; however, in order for the requested options to be applied
to it, it must be placed before the graphics procedure. The GOPTIOND used above and
explained below.
reset = option resets graphics options to their default values.

gunit = sets the units of character height measurement to percentage of display height.
cback = option sets the color background to black.
cfont= option sets the font color to white
device = option selects the device driver to use to create a graphic file(GIF)
htitle= option sets the text height for the first title to 3 (in percentage of display height).
htext = option sets the text height for all text to 2 (in percentage of display height).
Interpol: interpolation method (i.e., how to "connect" the points)
border option includes a border around the graphics output area.
In Part II, SYMBOL statements create SYMBOL definitions, which are used by the GPLOT
procedure. These definitions control:
• The appearance of plot symbols and plot lines, including bars, boxes, confidence limit
lines, and area fills
• Interpolation methods
Part III defines the Axes 1 and 2 where we can name the axis, spiffy the color, length of each
axis and customize the number of major and minor divisions on it.
Having seen various options in GPLOT now let us look at the GPLOT statement in Part-IV.
Line:2 Tells SAS to produce a graph for each category in the variable specified in BY
statement. Note that to use BY in GPLOT, the dataset should be sorted by the BY variable.
In this example, a graph will be produced by each client in the dataset.
Line:3 specifies the X and Y axes in the graph. Here we are plotting two variables – O/S and
Payments in the same Y variable (ie FICO_score) .The OVERLAY option on the PLOT
statement makes sure that both plot lines appear on the same graph. Further, definitions
done in the Part-III are applied using Haxis and Vaxis options.
POC GPLOT provides the flexibility to plot single or multiple variables on a same graph. Many
a time we would require to name the SAS graph files and store it in a specific directory so that
we have control over the files when we do the automation. This can be achieved by DEVICE
option in GOPTIONS.
In scorecard tracking or Champion-challenger strategy tracking projects often there are many
segmentations (like score segments or strategy identifiers or vintage segments) and charting
for various performance variables are carried out to compare the segments. This kind of
complicated charting can be automated using various options of GPLOT.
SAS Powered Reporting

A lot of consumer finance analytics work involves some form of reporting. Analytics
community prefers the reports to be in a spreadsheet (MS Excel) format as they can carry out
further analysis. For the regular production reporting automation is carried out to avoid
manual work as much as possible. This chapter briefs some techniques and possibilities to
explore for various reporting tasks.
In Consumer Finance, we use PROC EXPORT, ODS HTML or DDE methods to produce an
excel or web based report. Let us look at some example to understand each one of them.
PROC EXPORT
PROC EXPORT procedure exports a SAS dataset into a MS Excel. It can also export the
data into other formats like Access or Lotus but we limit our discussion to Excel only.
Windows SAS provides an interface to do the data set export and when you want to do it
automatically, you can specify the same as a program block as shown below.
PROC EXPORT DATA= work.Account_perf

OUTFILE= "D:\ex_Account_perf.xls"
DBMS=EXCEL2000 REPLACE;
RUN;
Line: 1 Specifies the SAS library and dataset name to be exported
Line: 2 Specifies the path and Excel filename where the data to be explored
Line: 3 tells SAS what data output format it is and to replace the file if existing already.
Note that not all formats applied on the variables are preserved during the export process.
Also the labels are not exported by default.
Before we create reports using proc export, we may have to create the data set in SAS, which
could be directly exported to excel. This method is normally used when we have to send only
data tables as reports on a regular basis.
ODS HTML
Output Delivery System (ODS) statement in SAS allows the analysts to create HTML, and
Excel reports that are sharable. Its possible to create templates for these reports and applies
such formats on the final reports.
HTML formats are sharable across platforms and its possible to open those files in excel.
So with appropriate changes in file extensions we can create XLS files through the ODS
HTML statement. This is an advantage as many times customer prefers an Excel report but
they cannot be produced in Unix environments.
When using the ODS HTML statement, the basic call contains two parts: the ODS call
statement to tell SAS that an HTM/XLS output is requested and the ODS close statement to
tell SAS to close the report. Any output operations in between call and close statements are
directly written into an HTML output file.
For example, we are doing two operations- a PROC FREQ and a PROC PRINT – output of
these two procedures would be written into an HTML file, if they are specified between and
open and close statements. Let us look at an example
DATA account_perf;
format current_os dollar10.2 tot_payment words40. ;
label account="Account #"
fico_seg = "Fico Segments";
ext_status_code $ ;
cards;
Cmart 1002 401-500 300 100 A C
Cmart 1003 501-600 200 150 A C
Cmart 1004 601-700 1200 180 A D
Cmart 1005 701-800 800 190 Z A
Cmart 1006 801-900 450 200 Z A
GIA 1007 401-500 560 210 Z A
GIA 1008 501-600 450 180 A D
GIA 1009 601-700 900 145 A D
GIA 1110 701-800 300 148 Z D
;
run;
ODS HTML FILE='D:\ods_report_test.html';

proc print data = account_perf;
by client;
title "Sample accounts with FICO Score";
run;
Proc Freq data = account_perf;

tables client/list;
Title "# of Accounts by Client";
run;
ODS HTML CLOSE;
The data step above creates a SAS dataset ‘account_perf’. Format and labels are also
applied to demonstrate later that how ODS preserves them in the final output.
Line: 1 of ODS statement specifies the path and file name of the output report.
Line: 2 – A print statement that prints data for each client separately.
Line: 6- FREQ procedure is used to display the number of accounts for each client.
Line: 10 -Tells SAS to close the ODS file opened for various output.
All the outputs of the procedure used above are written to D:\ods_report_test.html file as
output tables. The standard template is used by default by SAS for the display. When writing
into the html file, SAS preserves the label, format, titles that are applied on the data, which is
an advantage over PROC EXPORT.
How do we produce an Excel report? One can just modify Line: 1 and change the file
extension to .xls (instead of .html) to create an excel file! This file can be opened in Excel with
all formats and labels preserved.
The output template provided by default can be changed by creating templates using PROC
Template procedure and the same can be applied at ODS run time.
Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)
Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) is a MS Windows protocol for dynamically transferring data
between Windows-based applications using a client/server model. Using this protocol SAS
System can request data or send data and commands to other windows applications like
Excel or PowerPoint.
“Could you put the data in an Excel spreadsheet, so that we could play with it?” We hear the
all the time from the managers, as they really like navigating through the spreadsheet and
doing additional calculations. Web based reports or SAS based reports (PROC REPORT or
PROC TABULATE) do not meet this requirement of the customer but mastering DDE can
help the analyst to create the customized reports in Excel
This is what you can achieve through DDE when working with Excel
i) You can have a nice template designed in Excel and direct the data into targeted
cells in the template
ii) You can put data sheets in excel and make refresh the excel reports or graph
iii) You can save the report into a new name and save it in a specified folder
iv) You can run a macro you recorded in excel which does additional formatting to
the output report.
Now let us look at an example to understand how DDE works in SAS. In the earlier example
we had a limitation that we could not use our own excel template for reporting . Now let us
assume we designed one excel template and stored it as ‘D:\MyReports\DDE_test.xls’ . Now
we want SAS to open this template and fill in the data for various columns.
First let us invoke excel and open the template we designed:
options noxwait noxsync;

x '"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\excel.exe" ';
FILENAME DDTEM DDE 'EXCEL|SYSTEM';
DATA _NULL_;
FILE DDTEM;
PUT '[OPEN("D:\MyReports\DDE_test.xls")]';
RC = SLEEP(3);
RUN;
Line:1- X command is used to invoke the excel short-cut in D: drive. If you don’t have a
shortcut created, please create one!
Line:2 – A FILENAME statement that establish a link with Excel system opened with a
keyword ‘DDE’ DDTM is the handle defined to refer to this link later in SAS data step.
Line:3 – A temporary dataset is created to invoke the template.
Line:4 – FILE statement to tell SAS which link is established with excel to be used
Line:5 – PUT command – passes on the instruction to EXCEL system – Here the instruction
is to open the template we created.
Line:6- SLEEP command to stop SAS system from processing for 3 minutes. This is to make
sure that the template in Excel is opened before SAS proceeds with the data updating in the
steps followed.
Now we have the template open in Excel and ready to receive data. We need to implement
another link to target worksheet and define the area in the template before we tell SAS where
to put the data. We will do it using the same FILENAME statement.
FILENAME DDE_SAS DDE "EXCEL|ACCOUNT_PERF!R2C1:R20C6" NOTAB;
Here, ‘Account_Perf’ in the template is defined as the target worksheet and the data area
marked contains rows starting from 2(R2) and ending at 20 (R20) and columns 1(C1) to
columns 6(C6). Please note that any data outside this defined area will be ignored. Next step
is to drive the data into the spread sheet in a DATA step. Here is how we do it.
(Please note that dataset used in previous section is used here , PUT statement is used to
write specified fields in to a file that is specified earlier with FILENAME statement. “09”x is a
delimiter specification that tells SAS to put a TAB after each variable written into the file.)
DATA _NULL_;
FILE DDE_SAS;
SET account_perf;
PUT
client $ "09"x
account "09"x
fico_seg $ "09"x
current_os "09"x
tot_payment "09"x;
RUN;
The above code use the link established with excel and drive the data from account_perf to
‘DDE_SAS’. PUT statement specifies the variable names and the order. "09"x is the delimiter
(ie TAB) .
We have seen the basic form of how DDE is used in automating the Excel reports with SAS.
Flexibility is that we can define the specific areas in Excel sheet and put the values from SAS
dataset there. Coupled with Macros, DDE could be used as a powerful method to create
EXCEL based reports.
Suppose there is an Excel macro on Client_report.xls, which does some formatting on the
reports and graphs after the data was updated. To do this task analyst have to open the file
and run the macro. With DDE this can also be achieved from SAS. Suppose our file had a
macro called ‘painter’ defined and we are now running the excel macro through SAS and
saving the file with a different name.
DATA _NULL_;
FILE DDE_SAS;
PUT '[RUN("Client_report.xls!painter")]';
PUT '[SAVE.AS("D:\MyReports\Client_report_formatted.xls")';
PUT '[QUIT()]';
RUN;
To conclude, SAS based reporting is largely limited to ODS HTML and DDE in analytics
environments. However SAS procedures like PROC REPORT and PROC TABULATE
provide lot of features to customize and format the reports.
SAS Macro Processing

The SAS macro language is help to reduce the amount of repetitive SAS code and it
facilitates passing information from one procedure to another procedure. Furthermore, we can
use it to write SAS programs that are "dynamic" and flexible. Generally, we can consider
macro language to be composed of macro variables and macro programs. In this chapter will
demonstrate how to create macro variables and how to write basic macro programs.
SAS Macro Variables
Many times we create macro variables to make them available through out various data steps
and procedures. The scope of the variables is mostly limited to the data step or the
procedures where they are created or used but through macro facility we can make them
available throughout the program. For example its possible to declare a list of variables used
in print and freq procedures repetitively as a macro variable and use it instead of a long list of
variables. Also its possible to compute the data range of the data for a report and assign that
to a macro variable so that all procedures and data step can access this information.
A macro variable can be created by using the %let statement. All the key words in statements
that are related to macro variables or macro programs are preceded by percent sign %; and
when we refer a macro variable it is preceded by an ampersand sign &. When we submit our
program, SAS will process the macro variables first, substituting them with the text string they
were defined to be and then process the program as a standard SAS program
There are two functions that are particularly useful when we want to get information in and out
of a data step. These are symput and symget. You use symput to get information from a data
step into a macro variable and symget is used when we want to get information from a macro
variable into a data step.
Now let us look at some examples:
DATA account_perf;
format current_os dollar10.2 ;
label account="Account #"
fico_seg = "Fico Segments";
ext_status_code $ ;
cards;
Cmart 1002 401-500 300 100 A C
Cmart 1003 501-600 200 150 A C
Cmart 1004 601-700 1200 180 A D
Cmart 1005 701-800 800 190 Z A
Cmart 1006 801-900 450 200 Z A
GIA 1007 401-500 560 210 Z A
GIA 1008 501-600 450 180 A D
GIA 1009 601-700 900 145 A D
GIA 1110 701-800 300 148 Z D
run;
%let varlist = current_os tot_payment;
Proc print data =account_perf;

Title " Weekly report ";
var &varlist;
run;
proc means data = account_perf;

var &varlist;run;
First line after the DATA step uses %LET statement to declare a macro variable ‘varlist’. Two
columns are assigned to the variable.(Note that there could be more variables or string that
could be assigned)
Line:4 – Var statement uses the ‘varlist’ variable with a ‘&’ prefix.
Line:7- The PROC Means procedure also uses the same variable to generate the statistics.
Though this example is not a good use of macro variables, this will give some idea about the
scope of variables and their availability.
The program below demonstrates the use of SYMPUT function to create macro variables
from a SAS data step. This is particularly useful, as many times we have to assign values to
macro variables from a SAS data step.
%let sweek =-1;

data _null_;
bd= INTNX('WEEK',today(), &sweek,'B');
edate = put(bd+6, date9.);
bdate = put (bd, date9.);
call symput ("edatec",edate);
call symput ("bdatec",bdate);
run;
Proc print data =account_perf;

Title " Weekly report from &bdatec to &edatec";
var &varlist;
run;
The program above is written for a weekly application reporting purpose where every table in
the report should have a header with start date and end date. Further applications considered
for these reporting should fall between these dates., finally, the report file also should have
this date stamp.
To achieve this previous week start date and end dates are computed in a data step and
assigned to macro variables. Now these dates are available during data extraction and
reporting steps of the program.
Line 1: declares macro variable ‘week’ with %let statement.
Line 3: INTX function is used to compute the beginning day of previous week.
Line 4: end date is computed using the beginning date.
Lines 6&7 : Call symput statement is used to assign the value of edate and bdate to macro
variables edatec and bdatec.
Line 10: The macro variables are used in the title statement of Print procedure to print start
date and end date.
There are some uses of macro variables but they are extensively used in macro processing to
pass on values into a SAS Macro. We will see that in the following sessions.
Macro Programs
A macro program is similar to a subroutine or a function in other programming languages. Sas

programs are usually written to do a task repetitively.
A macro program always starts with the %macro statement including the user defined
program name and it ends with a %mend statement.
Now let us look at a program to understand the macro processing . A sample data set is
created with three clients and various score segments.
DATA account_perf;
ext_status_code $ ;
cards;
Lowes 1008 101-200 450 180 A
Lowes 1009 201-300 900 145 A
Lowes 1110 301-400 300 148 Z
Lowes 1002 401-500 300 100 A
Lowes 1003 501-600 200 150 A
Lowes 1004 601-700 1200 180 A
Lowes 1005 701-800 800 190 Z
Lowes 1006 801-900 450 200 Z
GIA 1008 101-200 450 180 A
GIA 1009 201-300 900 145 A
GIA 1110 301-400 300 148 Z
GIA 1002 401-500 300 100 A
GIA 1003 501-600 200 150 A
GIA 1004 601-700 1200 180 A
GIA 1005 701-800 800 190 Z
GIA 1006 801-900 450 200 Z
Cmart 1008 101-200 450 180 A

Cmart 1009 201-300 900 145 A
Cmart 1110 301-400 300 148 Z
Cmart 1002 401-500 300 100 A
Cmart 1003 501-600 200 150 A
Cmart 1004 601-700 1200 180 A
Cmart 1005 701-800 800 190 Z
Cmart 1006 801-900 450 200 Z
;
run;
%macro score_seg (client,st_code,dataset);

proc print data = &dataset;
Title "FICO Segment for External Status=&st_code and Client
=&client";
var client ext_status_code fico_seg current_os;
where client=&client and ext_status_code =&st_code;
run;
%mend;
%score_seg('GIA','A',account_perf)
%score_seg('GIA','Z',account_perf)
%score_seg('Cmart','A',account_perf)
%score_seg('Cmart','Z',account_perf)
%score_seg('Lowes','A',account_perf)
%score_seg('Lowes','Z',account_perf)
Objective is to produce a set of reports to show FICO score segments and Current
Outstanding based on the External Status code. The report needs to be produced individually
for the clients specified. Now let us assume that the data set has more than 10 client and
several status codes and a large number of records. We can write a proc print step for each
and every combination but this macro simplifies that.
This task is repetitive. Only client status code and datasets are variables so they are the best
candidates for parameters (macro variables) that can be passed on from a Macro call.
After the data step line 1: defines the macro with %macro statement followed by macro name
‘%score_seg’. This is followed by, in parenthesis, the arguments or macro variables that are
passed on to the macro. These variables can take different values, every time a macro call is
made .
Line 2: Proc print statement is specified and data statement takes a macro variable as the
input data. The value assigned to this macro variable will be read as dataset name
Line 3: Title statement in PROC print . The macro variable passed on are used to print a
meaningful title
Line 5: Where statement takes the values from macro variables passed on . This will ensure
that the data is filtered as per the specifications of the user.
Line: 7 Tells SAS to end the macro with a %mend statement
Line 8: Calls the macro ‘%score_seg’. Values are passed on to the macro with a comma.
Line 9 onwards: the same macro is called for various combinations. Proc print is customized
for the analyst requirement
What we have seen above are basic macro constructs and some simple examples. Macros
are extremely useful in SAS programming environment and used in various contexts to
simplify the programs or to bring efficiency to data processing.
Exercise for you: Collect 3 Macro programs from your team members written for various
purposes. List down the functionality (what the macro does) and the context they are used.
Explain what way it simplifies the program.
PROC SQL and SAS

Structured Query Language (SQL) is a standardized, widely used language that retrieves and
updates data in relational tables and databases.
The SQL procedure is SAS’ implementation of Structured Query Language. PROC SQL is
part of Base SAS software, and you can use it with any SAS data set (table). Often, PROC
SQL can be an alternative to other SAS procedures or the DATA step. You can use SAS
language elements such as global statements, data set options, functions, informats, and
formats with PROC SQL just as you can with other SAS procedures.
PROC SQL is used in analytics to :
• Retrieve data from database tables or views (Oracle or SQL Server)

• Combine SAS datasets from tables or views (MERGE)
• Create datasets and indexes
• Compute statistics and Generate reports
Data extraction with PROC SQL
We often use PROC SQL to extract data from various warehouses. Below is an example
reproduced from a previous chapter.
PROC SQL;
Connect To ORACLE(User=501115644 Password=ypasswd Buffsize=10000
Path=CDCIT1 Preserve_Comments );
CREATE TABLE acct_status AS SELECT * FROM Connection To ORACLE
(SELECT current_account_nbr AS account_number,
external_status_reason_code AS
ext_rcode,external_status AS estatus,
billing_cycle_day AS billing_cycle_day
FROM
ACCOUNT_DIM
WHERE CLIENT_ID='BROOK BROS'
AND
nvl(EXTERNAL_STATUS_REASON_CODE,'0') <>'98');
Disconnect From ORACLE;
Quit;
In the above example PROC SQL use a connect string “Connect To

ORACLE(User=501115644 Password=ypasswd Buffsize=10000 Path=CDCIT1
Preserve_Comments )” to identify the oracle database (CDCITI) and use the user name and
passwords specified to read data from it. Further, CREATE TABLE statement creates a SAS
Dataset from the output of SELECT statement.
When querying a data warehouse, PROC SQL automatically converts the field formats in to
SAS formats. For example, a date field in Oracle will be converted into SAS date and an
Oracle Varchar field will be converted into character.
SAS Data steps with PROC SQL
PROC SQL can perform some of the operations that are provided by the DATA step and the
PRINT, SORT, and SUMMARY procedures.
Let us create a dataset and then we will see how PROC SQL works like a DATA step.
DATA account_perf;
INPUT client $ account fico_seg $ current_os tot_payment ;
cards;
Cmart 1002 401-500 300 100
Cmart 1003 501-600 200 150
Cmart 1004 601-700 1200 180
Cmart 1005 701-800 800 190
Cmart 1006 801-900 450 200
GIA 1007 401-500 560 210
GIA 1008 501-600 450 180
GIA 1009 601-700 900 145
GIA 1110 701-800 300 148
;
run;
PROC SQL;
title "Summary of O/S and Payments by Client";
select client, sum(current_os) as tot_os , sum(tot_payment)as
tot_payment
from account_perf
group by client
order by tot_os descending ;
quit;
The above program block shows how a PROC SQL is substituting a PROC PRINT, PROC
SORT and PROC SUMMARY.
Line 2: Assigns a title to the output of SELECT statement that follows

Line 3: Select statement with group function SUM used to summarize the data. GROUP BY
clause is used to compute the SUM for each distinct group in the database. ORDER BY is
used to sort the output and DESCENDING keyword is to control the sort order. It is also
possible to SORT by multiple variables.
A PROC SQL statement ends with ‘QUIT\;’ and it terminates the procedure. Output is always
printed to the screen (like PROC PRINT) and it’s also possible to create a SAS dataset from
the output. To create a dataset from the output the above program can be modified as
follows:
PROC SQL;
title "Summary of O/S and Payments by Client";
create table summary as select client, sum(current_os) as tot_os ,
sum(tot_payment)as tot_payment
from account_perf
group by client
order by tot_os descending ;
quit;
Line 3: Note the CREATE TABLE <table name> AS statement.
PROC SQL and SELECT statement
We have seen above how SELECT statements are used in PROC SQL. Most of data retrieval
and data combining are done using select statement. We will see some sample select
statements and how it is used conditionally to work with data. In the example above the
simple SELECT statement is shown below.
SELECT client, sum(current_os) as tot_os , sum(tot_payment)as

tot_payment
FROM account_perf
The SELECT statement must contain a SELECT clause and a FROM clause, both of which
are required in a PROC SQL query. Other clauses added to SLECT statements to restrict the
data retrieval or conditional processing . Those clauses are WHERE, ORDER BY, GROUP
BY and HAVING.
The WHERE clause restrict the data that you retrieve by specifying a condition that each row
of the table must satisfy. In our example below, clients are restricted to GIA and Cmart only.

tot_payment
FROM account_perf
WHERE client in ('GIA', 'CMART')
ORDER BY sorts the output in ascending or descending order as specified. In our example
below total outstanding in sorted in a descending order.

tot_payment
FROM account_perf
WHERE client in ('GIA', 'CMART')
ORDER BY tot_os descending ;
GROUP BY computes the statistics for each category of values in the specified variable. A
summary or group function like average or SUM in SELECT statement is followed by GROUP
BY clause to instruct SAS that the statistics should be computed for each group of data. Let
us look at our modified example to see how total outstanding and total payments are
computed client wise.
PROC SQL;
tot_payment
FROM account_perf
GROUP BY client;
quit;
The HAVING clause works with the GROUP BY clause to restrict the groups in a query’s
results based on a given condition. PROC SQL applies the HAVING condition after grouping
the data and applying aggregate functions. For example, the following query restricts the
groups to include only the client GIA.
PROC SQL;
tot_payment
FROM account_perf
GROUP BY client
HAVING Client='GIA';
quit;
Data retrieval Methods using SELECT
Using the dataset in above example, we will demonstrate how to retrieve data from a single
table and how to create SAS datasets from resultant output.
I. SELECT – All columns in a Table
PROC SQL;
SELECT * FROM account_perf;
quit;
II. SELECT- Specific columns in a Table
PROC SQL;
SELECT client,current_os FROM account_perf;
quit;
III. SELECT-How to create dataset from SELECT statements
As we have seen from the previous examples, just add a CREATE TABLE <Table Name> AS
before the SELECT statements. So the above example so modified would look like as follows
PROC SQL;
CREATE TABLE Sample_Dataset AS
SELECT client,current_os FROM account_perf;
quit;
IV. SELECT- Eliminating duplicate rows
PROC SQL;
SELECT DISTINCT client FROM account_perf;
quit;
V. SELECT-Computing values
PROC SQL;
SELECT client,(current_os/1000)as OS_in_1000 FROM account_perf;
quit;
Note that row level computing can be done using the formula or multiple columns.
VI. SELECT-Assigning Column Alias and formatting it.
We have seen earlier in our examples that a new column name is formed with ‘AS’ statement
in SELECT statement. Its also possible to specify the format of that variable in PROC SQL.
Let us have a look at how OS_in_1000 variable is formed.
PROC SQL;
SELECT client,(current_os/1000)as OS_in_1000 format =4.2 FROM
account_perf;
quit;
VII. SELECT – Conditional Assignment using CASE
Using CASE statement for conditional processing is a powerful feature of SAS Data step and
PROC SQL. Here is an example where in SELECT statement CASE statement is used to
create a new field Risk_Category based on certain conditions.
PROC SQL;
SELECT client,current_os,
CASE
WHEN current_os <= 300 THEN 'Low Risk'
WHEN current_os <= 800 THEN 'Med Risk'
ELSE 'High Risk'
END AS Risk_category
from account_perf;
quit;
Note that unlike DATA step CASE constructs, in PROC SQL each line does not end with a
semi column. Also ‘AS’ key word is logically follows after the END of the loop.
VIII. SELECT-Specifying COLUMN attributes
You can specify the following column attributes, which determine how SAS data is displayed:
FORMAT=
INFORMAT=
LABEL=
LENGTH=
If you do not specify these attributes, then PROC SQL uses attributes that are already saved
in the table or, if no attributes are saved, then it uses the default attributes. Let us have look at
an example:
PROC SQL;
SELECT client,current_os format =4.2 label ='Current Outstanding'
FROM account_perf;
quit;
IX. SELECT – Using Sub queries
SUB Queries and Queries inside a Query. Instances where the WHERE clause evaluates the
output of another SELECT statement, the second SLECT statement is known as a SUB
Query. Here is an example:
PROC SQL;
SELECT client,current_os
FROM account_perf
WHERE client IN (SELECT distinct client FROM account_perf
where tot_payment >180);
quit;
Though not a real life scenario, the above example demonstrates how a Sub-Query is used.
The sub-query returns a list of clients that had at least one payment more than $180 and their
current outstanding is listed for all accounts. In real life, esp when we work with multiple
tables, sub queries are very useful to frame the right WHERE clauses for data retrieval. Now
let us look at some conditional operators used in a WHERE clause of a SELECT Statement.
Exercise for you is to frame a query using these operators. Consult some online help for
syntax help.
Operator Definition
ANY Specifies that at least one of a set of values obtained from a

sub query must satisfy a given condition
ALL Specifies that all of the values obtained from a Sub query
must satisfy a given condition
BETWEEN-AND Tests for values within an inclusive range
CONTAINS Tests for values that contain a specified string
EXISTS Tests for the existence of a set of values obtained

From a sub query
IN Tests for values that match one of a list of values

IS NULL or IS MISSING Tests for missing values
LIKE Tests for values that match a specified pattern
X. SELECT- GROUP FUNCTIONS
There are a lot of group functions we can use in SELECT Statement of a PROC SQL. When
you use an aggregate function, PROC SQL applies the function to the entire table, unless you
use a GROUP BY clause. Here is an example:
PROC SQL;
SELECT client, avg(current_os) as avg_os , avg(tot_payment)as
avg_payment
FROM account_perf
GROUP BY client;
quit;
PROC SQL;
SELECT client, avg(current_os) as avg_os , avg(tot_payment)as
avg_payment
FROM account_perf;
quit;
When you execute these program blocks, the first PROC SQL computes the averages for
each client group and the second PROC SQL computes them for the entire table. Having
seen how a group function is used, below given is a list of group functions you can use in a
PROC SQL statement. Note that all of these are substitutes for a PROC SUMMMARY or
PROC MEANS statistics.
Function Definition
AVG, MEAN Mean or average of values
COUNT, FREQ, N Number of nonmissing values
CV Coefficient of variation (percent)
MAX Largest value

MIN Smallest value
NMISS Number of missing values
RANGE Range of values
STD Standard deviation

STDERR Standard error of the mean
SUM Sum of values
VAR Variance
XI. SELECT – Joining the tables
When we work with multiple SAS tables we often will have to join them for data processing.
We commonly use SAS DATA step and MERGE method to achieve this task. PROC SQL can
be used as a simpler substitute for the MERGE data step method. Let us create another
dataset so that we can demonstrate the example.
DATA account_perf2;
INPUT account fico_seg $ prev_os prev_payment ;
cards;
1002 401-500 400 100
1003 501-600 300 150
1004 601-700 400 180
1005 701-800 900 190
2009 601-700 600 145
1007 401-500 660 210
1008 501-600 750 180
2006 801-900 550 200
2009 601-700 600 145
2110 701-800 400 148
;run;
Now to join these tables for all common accounts (equi-join), we use DATA step and MERGE
statement as follows. Note that in the data step, dataset should be sorted before we MERGE
them.
proc sort data=account_perf out=account_perf;

by account;
run;
proc sort data=account_perf2 out =account_perf2;
by account;
run;
Data merged1;
merge account_perf(in=a) account_perf2(in=b);
by account;
if a=b;
run;
Now the same results can be achieved using PEOC SQL as follows.
Proc SQL;
create table merged2 as Select a.*, b.* from account_perf a,
account_perf2 b
where
a.account=b.account;
quit;
The above example demonstrates that how PROC SQL can simplify the coding. Not only that
we could avoid the data sort, now we can make use of the powerful WHERE clause to exactly
tell SAS various conditions of merging. With the use of Sub-queries and conditional
processing (like IN, NOT IN , LIKE , CONTAIN) in WHERE clause, we can achieve any
combination of data merging.
PROC SQL in SAS also provides direct merging of multiple tables with RIGHT JOIN, LEFT
JOIN and FULL JOIN keywords for various Outer joins. Readers are requested to explore
them as well.
Unix for SAS Analysts

Unix version of SAS is commonly used in organizations with large number of users.
Additionally, PC SAS and its Remote SUBMIT features are used to connect to Unix SAS.
While working with Unix SAS an analyst or SAS Programmer should be comfortable with a
few Unix navigation and utility commands that enables him/her to work independently and
efficiently. Here are some topics I thought would be useful.
Where and how typically Unix is used :
• Mostly the servers are Unix based with an ip address (e.g 3.172.21.66). SAS will be
installed in this server and also some facility for file storage.
• Mostly Databases/warehouses are in UNIX servers – Oracle and SAS based data
warehouses.
• SAS in Unix Server using Signon, Rsubmit, and batch execution etc.
• Files/datasets are uploaded and downloaded to and from Unix Servers(server
folders)
Unix Server Spaces or Remote Storage
Many a times the data is permanently stored in one of the Unix servers. One should know
how to use a library function to store and retrieve a dataset in unix. For example, if the
allocated space is in ‘/projects/dual_cards/jkurian ‘, to save or retrieve a SAS dataset into this
location, you need to declare a library name in SAS program as follows:
Libname rloc '/projects/dual_cards/jkurian';
proc datasets lib=rloc;run;
Proc datasets will list all the datasets in this location.
Note that in Unix, the ‘/’ sing is used to separate the directories. Reverse is the case when
you work with windows.
SASWORK in UNIX
‘Saswork’ is a location in Unix (server space) where SAS does the data processing by default.
It’s a shared space where each SAS Unix user is allocated with space to process their
request. Typically the size of SASwork runs into 100 plus GBs but due to the number of users
and volume of data used, this space gets consumed very fast. Exhausting this space can
lead to terminating all the SAS program submitted by multiple users hence it’s a responsibility
of an analyst to monitor this space.
Let us learn 15 Unix commands listed below. These commands are commonly used in
consumer finance environment and meet 90% of the requirements while working with Unix
SAS.
A List of Useful UNIX Commands
pwd: to see what’s the present working directory

Usage: /home/jkurian> pwd
ls : Lists the files and folders
ls –l : detailed listing of files and directories
Wildcard usage: ls –l *. sas7*
Usage: /home/jkurian> ls –l
mkdir : make a directory
Usage: mkdir <filename>
cd : change into a directory
Usage: cd <folder Name>
cp : to copy a files/directory
Usage: cp <filename> <folder name/filename>
rmdir: remove a directory
rm : remove a file
rm -R : Remove files and directories, recursively, empty or not
cat : to read a text file (csv, sas pgm etc) .prints the contents to the screen
chmod : Change file attributes (Read / Write / Executable for owner, group & others)
Usage: chmod 777 <filename/folder name>
Tips: 777- all access, 775 – all access to the group, 700- protect files
gzip : to compress a file

Usage: gzip <filename>
gunzip: Unzips the files that are compressed

Usage: gunzip <filename>
grep – a very powerful text searching command. Always used when we want to list the files
created by a user or space utilization.
Usage 1: ls -l | grep jkurian – returns all files created by jkurian
Usage 2: grep ‘jkurian’ *.sas – lists lines where there is a ‘jkurian’ occurrence anywhere
inside the .SAS files
ps -ef - Lists the processes currently running. Useful when we want to kill some program we
submitted.
Usage: ps -ef | grep <user id> lists all the process id for that particular user. Process ID or
PIDs are required to kill a particular process.
kill –9 - Kills a specified process that’s submitted by the user.

Usage : kill –9 <PID> - PID Obtained by using ‘ps’ command.
df -k . Shows the space utilized and space available for the root folder. Helpful to estimate
the space availability. Space is showed in kilobytes.
1. Steps to see the SASWORK space availability
1. Telnet/Logon to the Server (your business server)

2. Issue command ‘cd /saswork’ - if /saswork is the work folder
3. Issue command ‘df –k .’
The space utilization would be printed to the screen. Don’t submit a program unless there is
enough space free (At least 10% free)
2. Steps to know how many folders are created in SASWORK
1 Telnet/Logon to the Server (your server)
2 Issue command ‘cd /saswork’
3 Issue command ls –l | grep ‘jkurian’
Substitute your username instead of ‘jkurian’, to get of folders created by you in SAS work.
Its important to clean up the dead or orphan processes in your SASwork to optimize the
saswork space.
3. Steps to remove a folder in SASWORK that’s no more required
1 Go to /saswork
2 Issue command ls –l | grep ‘jkurian’ to see the folders created by you
3 Issue command rm –R <foldername> to remove the entire folder.
If you want to remove only files inside a folder, do ‘cd’ into that folder and use ‘rm <filename> ‘
command to remove the file.
4. FTP and How to work with it

File transfer protocol- we use ftp utility/command to transfer files (sas pgms, datasets, text
outputs) between servers and also to upload and download between desktop and servers.
FTP from desktop - Go to START/RUN and type ftp <remote server name/ip> (Just like
telnet)
FTP between two Unix servers (your server) - Issue ‘ ftp <ip address>‘ command in the Unix
shell prompt.
Commonly Used FTP commands:

put : put <filename>
get : get <file name>
mput: mput *.sas –matches the pattern
mget: mget *.sas
prompt: turns the prompt off
bin: sets the transfer mode to binary- use it for excel, datasets etc
lcd : change local directory path
pwd : see present working directory
ls: list files and folders in the remote server.
5. Steps to run a SAS program in a Telnet Session (Unix Server)
First create a SAS program and store it in one of the Unix folders OR FTP a program from the
desktop. At the shell prompt issue the following command
nohup sas <filename> &
For example:
/home/jkurian> nohup sas scoretest.sas &
nohup: to protect from hang ups – you can close the telnet window and the program would
be still running!
Sas: key word to invoke SAS program to execute the program
&: Running the program in background – you can continue work in the same terminal
You can locate the log and output files within the same directory as you submitted the
program.
Sum-up With OPTIONS
Objective of this page is to discuss about various options in SAS that can be set locally to
control the way SAS process data or display output.
SAS system options control many aspects of your SAS session, including the efficiency of
program execution, and the attributes of SAS files and data libraries. These options come
with default values supplied by SAS or set locally. Some of these options are often used.
FIRSTOBS=: causes SAS to begin reading at a specified observation in a data set. If SAS is
processing a file of raw data, this option forces SAS to begin reading at a specified line of
data. The default is firstobs=1.
Usage: options firstobs=3;
OBS= : specifies the last observation from a data set or the last record from a raw data file
that SAS is to read. To return to using all observations in a data set use obs=max. This is
used when we wanted to read only a few records from large dataset for testing purposes.
Usage: options obs=10 ; options obs=max ;
NODATE= : suppresses the printing of date and time to the log and output window. By
default, the date and time is always printed
Usage: options nodate ;
COMPRESS=: Compresses the SAS dataset being created. COMPRESS is a great space
saver . Whenever we work with large data files make sure that this option is explicitly
specified as it compressed the dataset up to 65% of its original size.
Usage: options compress =yes|No ;
ERRORS= : controls the maximum number of observations for which complete error
messages are printed. The default maximum number of complete error messages is
errors=20.
Usage: options errors =100;
There are a few other options that help to control the way SAS processes data. Please
consult the SAS help for a complete list.
Appendix-I Practice Programs

Reading data using simple list input.
This program reads in data separated by a blank space using simple list input style in the
INPUT statement. If your data is delimited by another character other than a blank or space,
the DLM= option and/or DSD option on the INFILE statement will need to be specified.
data grades;
infile datalines;
input student $ test1-test4;
datalines;
A1237 3.8 3.7 3.2 3.9
A9361 2.9 3.0 3.6 3.5
B3051 4.0 3.8 3.9 4.0
;
proc print;
run;
Reading data using column input
Note: Column input requires the data to be standard numeric or character data
data employee;
input lastname $ 1-10 fname $ 12-21 ssn 23-31 status $ 33-38;
datalines;
Green Samual 888888888 Hourly
Brennon Carol 123456789 Salary
Wang Robert 999999999 Salary
Randolph Virginia 987654321 Salary
;
proc print;
run;
Reading data using formatted input
This program reads in data using informats for a file with no delimiters.
data acctinfo;
input acctnum $8. date mmddyy10. amount comma9.;
format date mmddyy10.;
datalines;
0074309801/15/2001$1,003.59
1028754301/17/2001$672.05
3320899201/19/2001$702.77
0345900601/19/2001$1,209.61
;
proc print;
run;
Reading data using named input
Read datalines or records that contain a variable name followed by an equal sign and the
value.
data deptinfo;
input dept $ last= $ first= $ start= $10.;
datalines;
acct start=15-01-2000 first=Mary last=Lowe
hr start=01-09-1984 first=Greg last=Richards
oper start=01-11-1990 first=Cindy last=Lou
oper start=15-05-1995 first=Julie last=Simpson
acct start=01-03-1999 first=Sam last=Hampton
;
proc print;
run;
Reading comma delimited data with modified list input
Read in comma-delimited data by specifying the DSD option on the INFILE statement and
using modified list-input style.
data grades;
infile datalines dsd;
input student :$20. test1-test4 fee :dollar8.;
datalines;
"Alexander,Bertrum",3.8,,,3.9,$500
"Chang,Daniel",,3.0,3.6,3.5,$400
"Elano,Fen",4.0,3.8,3.9,4.0,$300
;
proc print;
run;
Reading a TAB delimited file
Read an external file into a SAS data set when the variables in the external file are separated
with a TAB character. Note: On ASCII systems (PC, UNIX, MAC, VMS) the hex
representation of a TAB character is '09'x. On EBCDIC systems (VM, MVS, VSE) the hex
representation of a TAB is '05'x.
data _null_;
file 'c:\temp\tabdlm.txt';
put "Samuel B. Thompson" '09'x "04/28/1995" '09'x "Raleigh";
put "Suzy B. Thomspon" '09'x "5/1/1993" '09'x "Wake Forest";
run;
data info;
infile 'c:\temp\tabdlm.txt' DSD dlm='09'x truncover;
input name :$30. DOB :mmddyy8. city :$20.;
run;
proc print;
format dob mmddyy8.; run;
Reading multiple records to create one observation
This program creates one SAS record by reading multiple records from the source dataset.
/* Create sample data with variable length records. */

/* Each person's data spans multiple records. */
data test;
infile datalines n=4 truncover;
input #1 @1 name $15.
#2 @1 address1 $22.
#3 @1 address2 $30.
#4 @1 phone_no $12.;
datalines;
Sonya Larson
10054 Plum Tree Rd
Buffalo NY 10068
716-555-1348
Kip Holfser
902 West Blvd
Lansing, MI 48910
517-555-0227
Chan Rong
3052 East Bank Way
Savannah GA 30058
912-555-0025
Randy Nguyen
100 49th Street
Harrisburg PA 19075
717-555-7773
;
proc print;
run;
Use of PROC IMPORT to read a CSV, TAB or delimited file
This program reads an exclamation point (!) delimited file variable names on the first row.
data _null_;/* Create test file to read using PROC IMPORT below. */
file 'c:\temp\pipefile.txt';
put"x1!x2!x3!x4";
put "11!22!.! ";
put "111!.!333!apple";
run;
proc import
datafile='c:\temp\pipefile.txt'
out=work.test
dbms=dlm
replace; /* note this is the first semi-colon */
delimiter='!';
getnames=yes;
run;
proc print;
run;
Reading a comma delimited file with a .csv extension
Since the DBMS= value is CSV, you do not have to use the DELIMITER= statement. Also
assuming the variable names are on the first row, the GETNAMES= statement is also not
required.
/* Create comma delimited test file to read using PROC IMPORT below.
*/
data _null_;
file 'c:\temp\csvfile.csv';
put"var1,var2,var3,var4";
put "apple,banana,coconut,date";
put "apricot,berry,crabapple,dewberry";
run;
proc import
datafile='c:\temp\csvfile.csv'
out=work.fruit
dbms=csv
replace;
run;
proc print;
run;
Creating a delimited file using a PUT statement
filename xx 'd:\test.txt';
data _null_;
set sashelp.shoes (keep= Region Returns Sales obs=20);
file xx dlm='~';
put Region Returns Sales;
run;
Open the file 'd:\test.txt' to see the output.
Creating an external file with column-aligned data
With column style output, specify the starting and ending column numbers for the output data
after the variable name. The sample below uses column style PUT for NAME and AGE.
You can also use control pointers on a PUT statement to align data in columns. Below, an
absolute control pointer ("@") specifies column 20 as the starting position for SEX. Relative
control pointers ("+n") help align WEIGHT and HEIGHT.
data _null_;
set sashelp.class (obs=8);
file log;
put name 1-8 age 13-15 @20 sex +5 weight 5.1 +5 height;
run;
Concatenating data sets Using SET
data one;
input name $ age;
datalines;
Chris 36
Jane 21
Jerry 30
Joe 49
;
data two;
input name $ age group;
datalines;
Daniel 33 1
Terry 40 2
Michael 60 3
Tyrone 26 4
;
data both;
set one two;
run;
proc print data=both;
A Simple MERGE
/* Create sample data */
data one;
input id $ fruit $;
datalines;
a apple
a apple
b banana
c coconut
;
data two;
input id $ color $;
datalines;
a amber
b brown
c cream
c cocoa
c carmel
;
data both;
merge one two;
by id;
run;

run;
Merging and creation of subsets based on Origin
This program demonstrates how to do Merging data sets by a common variable and create
output data sets based upon observation origin.
data one;
input id $ name $ dept $ project $;
datalines;
000 Miguel A12 Document
111 Fred B45 Survey
222 Diana B45 Document
888 Monique A12 Document
999 Vien D03 Survey
;
data two;
input id $ name $ projhrs;
datalines;
111 Fred 35
222 Diana 40
777 Steve 0
888 Monique 37
999 Vien 42
;
data both one_only two_only;
merge one(in=in1) two(in=in2);
by id;
if in1 and in2 then output both;
else if in1 then output one_only;
else output two_only;
run;
title 'Both';
run;
title 'One only';

proc print data=one_only;
run;
title 'Two only';

proc print data=two_only;
run;
Convert missing values to zero and values of zero to missing
This program converts missing values to zero and values of zero to missing for numeric
variables.
Method is to Use the ARRAY statement with the automatic _NUMERIC_ variable to process
all the numeric variables from the input data set. Use the DIM function to set the upper
bound of an iterative DO to the number of elements in the array.
/* Example 1 - Convert all numeric missing values to zero.

*/
data numbers;
input var1 var2 var3;
datalines;
7 1 4
. 0 8
9 9 .
5 6 2
8 3 0
;
data nomiss(drop=i);
set numbers;
array testmiss(*) _numeric_;
do i = 1 to dim(testmiss);
if testmiss(i)=. then testmiss(i)=0;
end;
run;
proc print;
run;
Convert selected numeric values from zero to missing
Use the ARRAY statement to define the specific numeric variables to change from a value of
zero to a missing value. Use the DIM function to set the upper bound of an iterative DO to the
number of elements in the array.
data deptnum;
input dept qrt1 qrt2 qrt3 qrt4;
datalines;
101 3 0 4 9
410 8 7 5 8
600 0 0 6 7
700 6 5 6 9
901 3 8 7 0
;
data nozero(drop=i);
set deptnum;
array testzero(*) qrt1-qrt4;
do i = 1 to dim(testzero);
if testzero(i)=0 then testzero(i)=.;
end;
run;
proc print;
run;
Create and apply user-defined formats
proc format;
value codesc 1-50='low'
50-high='high';
run;
data values;
input prodnum custnum $ code;
datalines;
64412 D0001568 49
64412 Z0056012 51
78001 C0000969 3
78001 F0032140 11
88204 B0000073 79
89569 R0022217 1
99301 H0009355 99
99301 C0000889 58
;
data values;
set values;
codefmt=put(code,codesc.);
run;
proc print data=values;

run;
Convert values from character to numeric
This program converts a character value to a numeric value by using the INPUT function.
Specify a numeric informat that best describes how to read the data value into the numeric
variable.
data char;
input string :$8. date :$6.;
numeric=input(string,8.);
sasdate=input(date,mmddyy6.);
format sasdate mmddyy10.;
datalines;
1234.56 031704
3920 123104
;
proc print;
run;
Convert values from numeric to character
Converts a numeric value to a character value by using the PUT function. Specify a numeric
format that describes how to write the numeric value to the character variable. To left align
the resulting character value, specify -L after the format specification.
data num;
input num date: mmddyy6.;
datalines;
123456 110204
1000 120504
;
data now_char;
set num (rename=(num=oldnum date=olddate));
num=put(oldnum,6. -L);
date=put(olddate,date9.);
run;
proc print;
run;
Working with Dates in the SAS System
SAS System has various date formats a the programs below demonstrates various such
formats in SAS data steps.
data dates;
input country $ 1-11 @13 depart date7. nights;
cards;
Japan 13may89 8
Greece 17oct89 12
New Zealand 03feb90 16
Brazil 28feb90 8
Venezuela 10nov89 9
Italy 25apr89 8
USSR 03jun89 14
Switzerland 14jan90 9
Australia 24oct89 12
Ireland 27may89 7
;
proc print data=dates;

title 'Departure Dates with SAS Date Values';
run;
proc print data=dates;

title 'Departure Dates in Calendar Form';
format depart mmddyy8.;
run;
data tourdate;
set dates;
format depart date7.;
run;
proc contents data=tourdate;
run;
proc print data=tourdate;

title 'Report with Departure Date Spelled Out';
format depart worddate18.;
run;
proc sort data=tourdate out=sortdate;

by depart;
run;
proc print data=sortdate;
var depart country nights;
title 'Departure Dates Listed in Chronological Order';
run;
data home;
set tourdate;
return=depart+nights;
format return date7.;
run;
proc print data=home;
title 'Dates of Departure and Return';
run;
data corrdate;
set tourdate;
if country='Switzerland' then depart='21jan90'd;
run;
proc print data=corrdate;
title 'Corrected Value for Switzerland';
run;
data pay;
set tourdate;
duedate=depart-30;
if weekday(duedate)=1 then duedate=duedate-1;
format duedate weekdate29.;
run;
proc print data=pay;
var country duedate;
title 'Date and Day of Week Payment Is Due';
run;
data ads;
set tourdate;
now=today();
if now+90<=depart<=now+120;
run;
proc print data=ads;
title 'Tours Departing between 90 and 120 Days from Today';
format now date7.;
run;
/* Calculating a duration in days */

data temp;
start='08feb82'd;
rightnow=today();
age=rightnow-start;
format start rightnow date7.;
run;
proc print data=temp;
title 'Age of Tradewinds Travel';
run;
/* Calculating a duration in years */

data temp2;
start='08feb82'd;
rightnow=today();
agedays=rightnow-start;
ageyrs=agedays/365.25;
format ageyrs 4.1 start rightnow date7.;
run;
proc print data=temp2;
title 'Age in Years of Tradewinds Travel';
run;
Use of MDY function
/* Use month, day and year variables to create a SAS date*/

data one;
input month day year;
datalines;
1 1 99
02 02 2000
;
data two;
set one;
sasdate=mdy(month,day,year);
format sasdate mmddyy10.;
run;
proc print;
run;
Convert a SAS date to a character variable
data one;
input sasdate :mmddyy6.;
datalines;
010199
;
data two;
set one;
chardate=put(sasdate,mmddyy6.);
run;
proc print;
run;
Calculate number of years, months, and days between two dates
data a;
input @1 dob mmddyy10.;
tod=today(); /* Get the current date from operating system */
/* Determine number of days in the month prior to current month */
bdays=day(intnx('month',tod,0)-1);
/* Find difference in days, months, and years between */

/* start and end dates */
dd=day(tod)-day(dob);
mm=month(tod)-month(dob);
yy=year(tod)-year(dob);
/* If the difference in days is a negative value, add the number */

/* of days in the previous month and reduce the number of months */
/* by 1. */
if dd < 0 then do;
dd=bdays+dd;
mm=mm-1;
end;
/* If the difference in months is a negative number add 12 */

/* to the month count and reduce year count by 1. */
if mm < 0 then do;
mm=mm+12;
yy=yy-1;
end;
format dob tod mmddyy10.;
datalines;
01/01/1970
02/28/1992
01/01/2000
03/01/2000
05/10/1990
05/11/1990
05/12/1990
;
proc print;
run;
Determine the week number of the year
data test; * Create sample data */;

input date :mmddyy6.;
format date date9.;
datalines;
010104
010404
041804
081804
123104
;
data getweek;
set test;
/* Use INTNX to roll DATE back to the first of the year. */
/* Pass the result as the 'start' parameter to INTCK. */
week=intck('week',intnx('year',date,0),date)+1;
run;
proc print;
run;
DO LOOP block
This program demonstrates how to conditionally adjust variable values with a DO block in a
SAS data step
data acctinfo;
format duedate date9.;
input duedate date9. intrate;
datalines;
10oct2000 1.10
10nov2010 1.12
;
/* Conditionally set values for STATUS, INTRATE, and NEWLOAN */

/* based on the value of DUEDATE */
data acctinfo;
set acctinfo;
if duedate ge today() then do;
status='On Time';
intrate=intrate*.99;
newloan='Solicit';
end;
if duedate lt today() then do;
status='Late';
intrate=intrate*1.02;
newloan='Deny';
end;
run;
proc print;
run;
Using the SCAN function
Suppose you want to produce an alphabetical list by last name, but your NAME variable
contains FIRST, possibly a middle initial, and LAST name. The SCAN function makes quick
work of this. Note that the LAST_NAME variable in PROC REPORT has the attribute of
ORDER and NOPRINT, so that the list is in alphabetical order of last name but all that shows
up is the original NAME variable in First, Middle, and Last name order.
DATA FIRST_LAST;
INPUT @1 NAME $20.
@21 PHONE $13.;
***Extract the last name from NAME;
LAST_NAME = SCAN(NAME,-1,' '); /* Scans from the right */
DATALINES;
Jeff W. Snoker (908)782-4382
Raymond Albert (732)235-4444
Steven J. Foster (201)567-9876
Jose Romerez (516)593-2377
;
PROC REPORT DATA=FIRST_LAST NOWD;
TITLE "Names and Phone Numbers in Alphabetical Order (by Last
Name)";
COLUMNS NAME PHONE LAST_NAME;
DEFINE LAST_NAME / ORDER NOPRINT WIDTH=20;
DEFINE NAME / DISPLAY 'Name' LEFT WIDTH=20;
DEFINE PHONE / DISPLAY 'Phone Number' WIDTH=13 FORMAT=$13.;
RUN;
INDEX Function for String Search
INDEX, INDEXC, INDEXW functions searches a character expression for a string, specific
character, or word.
* Sample 1: INDEX */
data one;
input string $25.;
position=index(string,'cat'); /* Search for the word 'cat' */
letter=INDEX(string,'c'); /* Search for the letter 'c' */
datalines;
the cat came back
catastrophic
curious cat caterwauls
;
proc print data=one;

run;
* Sample 2: INDEXC */
data two;
input string $25.;
if indexc(string,'0123456789')> 0 then has_numbers=string;
else no_numbers=string;
datalines;
Box 101
Pine Street
;
proc print data=two;
run;
/* Sample 3: INDEXW */
data three;
input string $25.;
if indexw(string,'my') > 0 then contains_the_word_my='yes';
datalines;
my aunt amy
in the army
my oh my
;
proc print data=three;

run;
Using arrays and DO loop in Data Step
This program demonstrates how to compute averages of variable values with arrays and DO
loop.
data tripinfo;
infile datalines truncover;
input custno trip1 trip2 trip3 trip4 trip5 trip6 trip7 trip8 trip9
trip10;
datalines;
123 200 225 432 300 100 550 80 325 600 270
124 2000 3000 2205 1400 1385 1240 1000

125 900 890 1000 1025 1200 1120 1000 800 750 300
126 3000 3000 3000 3000 3000
127 699 599
;
/* Put variables TRIP1-TRIP10 into an array and with a DO block,

determine */
/* if a condition is met and then perform a subsequent action. Use a
DO */
/* loop to process variables in the array.
*/
data average;
set tripinfo;
array trip (10) trip1-trip10;
do i=1 to 10;
if i le 5 then do;
if trip(i)=. then avg5=.;
end;
else avg5=mean(of trip1-trip5);
if trip(i)=. then avg10=.;
else avg10=mean(of trip1-trip10);
end;
keep custno avg5 avg10;
run;
proc print;
run;
Using _TEMPORARY_ arrays for Missing value Treatment
data test;
input var1 var2 var3;
datalines;
10 20 30
100 . 300
. 40 400
;
/* The _TEMPORARY_ array values are used to populate the missing

values*/
data new(drop=i);
set test;
array newval(3)_TEMPORARY_ (.1 .2 .3) ;
array now(3) var1 var2 var3;
do i=1 to 3;
if now(i)=. then now(i)=newval(i);
end;
run;
proc print;
run;
A Simple SAS Macro
This Macro shows a way to concatenate all datasets together without having to type in each
one.
data x1;
x=1;
run;
data x2;
x=2;
run;
data x3;
x=3;
run;
options mprint;
%macro test;
data final;
set %do i = 1 %to 3;
x&i
%end;;
run;
%mend test;
%test
proc print; run;
BASIC PROC SQL Exercises
This code shows three ways in which SQL can create SAS datasets.
1) as an empty copy of some other table
2) as the results of any valid SQL select expression
3) from the traditional SQL DML statements
/* creates a base table for further use */
data paper;
input author$1-8 section$9-16 title$17-43 @45 time time5.
duration;
format time time5.;
label title='Paper Title';
cards;
Tom Testing Automated Product Testing 9:00 35
Jerry Testing Involving Users 9:50 30
Nick Testing Plan to test, test to plan 10:30 20
Peter Info SysArtificial Intelligence 9:30 45
Paul Info SysQuery Languages 10:30 40
Lewis Info SysQuery Optimisers 15:30 25
Jonas Users Starting a Local User Group 14:30 35
Jim Users Keeping power users happy 15:15 20
Janet Users Keeping everyone informed 15:45 30
Marti GraphicsMulti-dimensional graphics 16:30 35
Marge GraphicsMake your own point! 15:10 35
Mike GraphicsMaking do without color 15:50 15
Jane GraphicsPrimary colors, use em! 16:15 25

;
run;
/* This creates table P2, and empty copy of PAPER */
proc sql;
create table p2 like paper;quit;
* In one step, this creates a table, P3, that contains all

of the papers presented after 12:00. */;
proc sql;
create table p3 as select * from paper
where time > '12:00't;quit;
/* This creates a table, unlike any existing table. */
proc sql;
create table counts(
section char(20),
papers num);
quit;
proc contents data=p2;

title2 'Description of table P2';
run;
proc print data=p3;

title2 'Table P3';
run;
proc contents data=counts;

title2 'Description of table COUNTS';
run;
MERGING using PROC SQL
This example demonstrate another example of merging using PROC SQL where the
"common" variable has a different name in each table and the "common" variable has a
different format and the ‘common’ variable has some prefix in some table and not in others.
data orders;
input cno $ pno $ qty;
cards;
C001 P001 10
C001 P002 20
C002 P003 30
C002 P002 20
C003 P003 50
;
data parts;
input no $ desc $ 4-20;
cards;
001 Part One
002 Part Two
003 Part Three
data cust;
input no $ name $ 4-20;
cards;
001 Cust One
002 Cust Two
003 Cust Three
;
proc sql;
select o.cno, c.name, o.pno, p.desc, o.qty

from orders o, parts p, cust c
where substr(cno, 2) = c.no
and substr(pno, 2) = p.no;
quit;
PROC FREQ- Options available
The examples below show various ways one can use the PROC FREQ procedure. Please
read the title of each step to understand what it does.
options ls=132;
data new;
input a b @@;
cards;
1 2 2 1 . 2 . . 1 1 2 1
;
proc freq;
title 'NO TABLES STATEMENT';
run;
proc freq;
tables a / missprint;
title '1-WAY FREQUENCY TABLE WITH MISSPRINT OPTION';
run;
proc freq;
tables a*b;
title '2-WAY CONTINGENCY TABLE';
run;
proc freq;
tables a*b / missprint;
title '2-WAY CONTINGENCY TABLE WITH MISSPRINT OPTION';
run;
proc freq;
tables a*b / missing;
title '2-WAY CONTINGENCY TABLE WITH MISSING OPTION';
run;
proc freq;
tables a*b / list;
title '2-WAY FREQUENCY TABLE';

run;
proc freq;
tables a*b / list missing;
title '2-WAY FREQUENCY TABLE WITH MISSING OPTION';
run;
proc freq;
tables a*b / list sparse;
title '2-WAY FREQUENCY TABLE WITH SPARSE OPTION';
run;
proc freq order=data;

tables a*b / list;
title '2-WAY FREQUENCY TABLE, ORDER=DATA';
run;
PROC MEANS
The examples below demonstrate the ways PROC MEANS used for basic statistics and
variable checking.
data gains; /*Example:1 */
input name $ team $ age ;
cards;
Alfred blue 6
Alicia red 5
Barbara . 5
Bennett red .
Carol blue 5
Carlos blue 6
;
run;
proc means nmiss n;
class team;
run;
data gains; /*Example:2 */

input name $ height weight;
cards;
Alfred 69.0 122.5
Alicia 56.5 84.0
Barbara 65.3 98.0
Bennett 63.2 96.2
Carol 62.8 102.5
Carlos 63.7 102.9
;
run;
proc means noprint;
class name;
output out=results;
run;
proc print data=results;
run;
data gains; /*Example : 3*/

input name $ sex $ height weight school $ time;
cards;
Alfred M 69.0 122.5 AJH 1
Alfred M 71.0 130.5 AJH 2
Alicia F 56.5 84.0 BJH 1
Alicia F 60.5 86.9 BJH 2
Philip M 69.0 115.0 AJH 1
Philip M 70.0 118.0 AJH 2
Robert M 64.8 128.0 BJH 1
Robert M 68.3 . BJH 2
Thomas M 57.5 85.0 AJH 1
Thomas M 59.1 92.3 AJH 2
Wakana F 61.3 99.0 AJH 1
Wakana F 63.8 102.9 AJH 2
William M 66.5 112.0 BJH 1
William M 68.3 118.2 BJH 2
;
proc means data=gains;
var height weight;
class sex;
output out=test
max=maxht maxwght
maxid(height(name) weight(name))=tallest heaviest;
run;
proc print data=test;
run;
proc means data=gains; /*Example 4:*/

title 'Statistics For All Numeric Variables';
run;
proc means data=gains maxdec=3 nmiss range
uss css t prt sumwgt skewness kurtosis;
var height weight;
title 'Requesting Assorted Statistics';
run;
PROC SUMMARY
A Number of PROC Summary examples are listed below. Rum them in SAS ans see how
they are different from each other.
DATA VIRUS;
INPUT DILUTION $ COMPOUND $ TIME @@;
IF DILUTION='A' THEN DL=1;
ELSE IF DILUTION='B' THEN DL=2;
ELSE IF DILUTION='C' THEN DL=4;
CARDS;
A PA 87 A PA 90
A PM 82 A PM 71
A UN 72 A UN 77
B PA 79 B PA 80
B PM 73 B PM 72
B UN 70 B UN 66
C PA 77 C PA 81
C PM 72 C PM 68
C UN 62 C UN 61
;
/* Use class variable COMPOUND to group data. */
PROC SUMMARY PRINT;

CLASS COMPOUND;
RUN;
PROC SUMMARY PRINT N MEAN STD STDERR SUM VAR MIN MAX CV CSS USS
RANGE NMISS;
VAR TIME DL;
CLASS COMPOUND;
RUN;
PROC SORT;
BY COMPOUND;
RUN;
/* Use by variable to group data, slightly */
/* different from class. */
PROC SUMMARY PRINT;

BY COMPOUND;
VAR TIME DL;
RUN;
PROC SUMMARY DATA=VIRUS;

VAR TIME;
CLASS COMPOUND;
OUTPUT OUT=OUTA MEAN=M STD=S N=COUNT;
RUN;
PROC PRINT;
RUN;
PROC SUMMARY DATA=VIRUS;

VAR TIME;
BY COMPOUND;
OUTPUT OUT=OUTA MEAN=M STD=S N=COUNT;
RUN;
PROC PRINT;
RUN;
Comparison of MEANS and SUMMARY Output
data relay;
input name $ sex $ back breast fly free;
cards;
Sue F 35.1 36.7 28.3 36.1
Karen F 34.6 32.6 26.9 26.2
Jan F 31.3 33.9 27.1 31.2
Andrea F 28.6 34.1 29.1 30.3
Carol F 32.9 32.2 26.6 24.0
Ellen F 27.8 32.5 27.8 27.0
Jim M 26.3 27.6 23.5 22.4
Mike M 29.0 24.0 27.9 25.4
Sam M 27.2 33.8 25.2 24.1
Clayton M 27.0 29.2 23.0 21.9
;run;
proc means data=relay noprint;

var back breast fly free;
class sex;
output out=newmeans min=;run;
proc print data=newmeans;

title 'Using PROC PRINT with PROC MEANS';
run;
proc summary data=relay print min;

var back breast fly free;
class sex;
output out=newsumm min=;
title 'Using PROC SUMMARY with the PRINT option';
run;
proc print data=newsumm;

title 'Using PROC PRINT with PROC SUMMARY';
run;
PROC GPLOT
A simple program to demonstrate the basic construct of GPLOT procedure.

/* Set the graphics environment */
goptions reset=all gunit=pct border cback=white
colors=(black blue green red)
ftext=swiss ftitle=swissb htitle=6 htext=4;
/* Create the data set STATS */
data stats;
input height weight;
datalines;
69.0 112.5
56.5 84.0
65.3 98.0
62.8 102.5
56.3 77.0
66.5 112.0
72.0 150.0
64.8 128.0
67.0 133.0
57.5 85.0
;
/* Define title */
title 'Study of Height vs Weight';
/* Generate scatter plot */

proc gplot data= stats;
plot height*weight;
run;
These Examples are mainly sourced from SAS Institute

website. Please visit:
http://support.sas.com/ctx/samples/index.jsp
Quick Index
A
H
Array Variables · 30
HTML Output · 57
B
I
BY Statement · 37, 45, 49
IF-ELSE Conditions · 37
IN statement , PROC SQL · 72
C INPUT Statement · 14
CARDS Statement · 15
CASE Condition · 70 J
COMPRESS Option · 79
Conditional Processing · 37 Joins, Table · 72
D K
Data Extraction · See Reading Data KEEP Statement · 29
DATA Statement · 14
DATA Step · 8
Data Value · 10 L
Dataset · See SAS Dataset
DATASETS Procedures · See Procedures LABEL Statement · 31
DDE · See Reporting LIBNAME Statement · 14
Delimited Data · See Reading Data
DOWNLOAD Procedure · 48
M
E Macro Language · 61
Macro Programs · 63
EBCDIC Data · See Reading Data Macro Variables · 61
EXPORT Procedure · See Reporting MEANS Procedure · 51
External Files · 18 MERGE Statement · 36
F N
FIRSTOBS Option · 79 NODATE Option · 79
FORMAT · 32
Formatted INPUT · See Reading Data
FREQ Procedure · 48 O
FTP Commands · 77
OBS Option · 79
Observation · 11
G ODS · See Reporting
OPTIONS · 79
GPLOT Procedure · 52 ORACLE, Connection · 22
GROUP Functions · 72
P SELECT statement · 68
SEMICOLON · 15
PRINT Procedure · 43 SORT Procedure · 44
PROC IMPORT · See Reading Data SQL Procedure · 66
PROC SQL · 66 Sub Queries · 71
Procedures · 8, 42
T
R
TABLES statement · 49
Reading Data · 17 TITLE Statement · 16
Reporting · 56 TRANSPOSE Procedure · 46
RUN Statement · 16
U
S
UNIX Commands · 76
SAS Dataset · 11
SAS Functions · 34
SAS Language · 9, See
V
SAS Names · 11
Variable · 10
SAS Statements · 12
Sas Variable
Creating · 25 W
SAS Variables · See Sas Language
SASWORK · 75 WHERE Condition · See
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This guide attempts to:

Unix Server Spaces or Remote Storage................................................. 75

Consumer Finance Analytics

Scope of Analytics in Consumer Finance

Account Management –Authorization, credit line management, sales promotion, account

To summarize , some of the SAS tools/modules/utilities typically in consumer finance

Introduction to SAS System

• Data entry, retrieval, management, and mining

A SAS program is composed of two fundamental components:

PROCs (PROCedures) - the SAS language is organized into a series of procedures, or

SAS Language in Nutshell

A SAS program consists of a series of DATA, data transformation and PROCedure

First Steps with Data and SAS

Objectives of this chapter is to:

Account # Open Date Status Code Credit Limit

Data Value, Variable, Observations, and Dataset

Account # Open Date Status Code Credit Limit

Rules for SAS names

4. Blanks cannot appear in SAS names.

Rules for SAS statements

1. SAS statements may begin in any column of the line.

A Simple Program Explained

Objective of this chapter:

1. Learn to use the DATA statement

Libname loc ‘c:\mydata’;

data rloc.sample_accounts; /* stores data permanently*/

Proc Print data = loc.sample_accouts;

Proc Freq data =loc.sample_accounts ;

Use: define a SAS library name

Syntax: Libname xx <folder reference>;

Libname loc ‘c:\mydata’;

Use: Names the SAS data set

Syntax: DATA SOMENAME;

Result: A temporary SAS data set named sample_accounts is created

Use: Defines names and order of variables to SAS

Syntax: INPUT variable variable_type column(s);

INPUT Account 1-7 OpenDate $ 9-17 StatusCode $ 21-22 CreditLimit 25-29;

Result: Input data are defined for SAS

INPUT Account 1-7 OpenDate $ 9-17 StatusCode $ 21-22 CreditLimit 25-29;

Use: Signals that input data will follow

Result: Data can be processed for the SAS data set

INPUT Account 1-7 OpenDate $ 9-17 StatusCode $ 21-22 CreditLimit 25-29;

Use: Signals the end of any SAS statement

Syntax:A DATA Step or PROCedure statement; (DATA;)

INPUT Account 1-7 OpenDate $ 9-17 StatusCode $ 21-22 CreditLimit 25-29;

Proc Print data = sample_accouts;

Result: SAS is signaled that the statement is complete

Use: Puts TITLES on your output

Syntax: TITLE 'some title';

Title " Account Sample";

Use: Instruct SAS to execute the SAS program

How to Run a SAS Program

• To learn data sources and methods to read data into SAS.

Reading Data Instreams and External Files using INPUT

Reading free formatted data instream(LIST INPUT)

Reading fixed formatted data instream(COLUMN INPUT)

Reading fixed formatted data from an external file

1234670 11-Sep-04 Z 2000

filename sacc "D:\Mydata\sample_accounts.txt";

Reading comma delimited data from an external file

Here's what the data in the file look like:

Reading Tab delimited data from an external file

1234670 11-Sep-04 Z 2000