Base SAS Software
The features provided by SAS/ETS software are
extensions to the features provided by base SAS software.
Many data management and reporting capabilities you will need
are part of base SAS software.
Refer to SAS Language: Reference and the SAS Procedures Guide
for documentation of base SAS software.
The following sections summarize base SAS software features of interest to
users of SAS/ETS software.
See Chapter 2 for further discussion
of some of these topics as they relate to time series data
and SAS/ETS software.
SAS DATA Step
The DATA step is your primary tool for reading and processing data
in the SAS System.
The DATA step provides a powerful general purpose programming language
that enables you to perform all kinds of data processing tasks.
The DATA step is documented in SAS Language: Reference.
Base SAS Procedures
Base SAS software includes many useful SAS procedures.
Base SAS procedures are documented in the SAS Procedures Guide.
The following is a list of base SAS procedures you may find useful:
- CATALOG
-
for managing SAS catalogs
- CHART
-
for printing charts and histograms
- COMPARE
-
for comparing SAS data sets
- CONTENTS
-
for displaying the contents of SAS data sets
- COPY
-
for copying SAS data sets
- CORR
-
for computing correlations
- CPORT
-
for moving SAS data libraries between computer systems
- DATASETS
-
for deleting or renaming SAS data sets
- FREQ
-
for computing frequency crosstabulations
- PLOT
-
for printing scatter plots
- PRINT
-
for printing SAS data sets
- RANK
-
for computing rankings or order statistics
- SORT
-
for sorting SAS data sets
- SQL
-
for processing SAS data sets with Structured Query Language
- STANDARD
-
for standardizing variables to a fixed mean and variance
- MEANS
-
for computing descriptive statistics and
summarizing or collapsing data over cross sections
- TABULATE
-
for printing descriptive statistics in tabular format
- TIMEPLOT
-
for plotting variables over time
- TRANSPOSE
-
for transposing SAS data sets
- UNIVARIATE
-
for computing descriptive statistics
Global Statements
Global statements can be specified anywhere in your SAS program,
and they remain in effect until changed.
Global statements are documented in SAS Language: Reference.
You may find the following SAS global statements useful:
- FILENAME
- for accessing data files
- FOOTNOTE
- for printing footnote lines at the bottom of each page
- %INCLUDE
- for including files of SAS statements
- LIBNAME
- for accessing SAS data libraries
- OPTIONS
- for setting various SAS system options
- RUN
- for executing the preceding SAS statements
- TITLE
- for printing title lines at the top of each page
- X
- for issuing host operating system commands from within your SAS session
Some base SAS statements can be used with any SAS procedure,
including SAS/ETS procedures.
These statements are not global,
and they only affect the SAS procedure they are used with.
These statements are documented in SAS Language: Reference.
The following base SAS statements are useful with SAS/ETS procedures:
- BY
- for computing separate analyses for groups of observations
- FORMAT
- for assigning formats to variables
- LABEL
- for assigning descriptive labels to variables
- WHERE
- for subsetting data to restrict the range of data processed
or to select or exclude observations from the analysis
SAS Functions
SAS functions can be used in DATA step programs
and in the COMPUTAB and MODEL procedures.
The following kinds of functions are available:
- character functions for manipulating character strings
- date and time functions,
for performing date and calendar calculations
- financial functions, for performing financial calculations
such as depreciation, net present value, periodic savings,
and internal rate of return
- lagging and differencing functions,
for computing lags and differences
- mathematical functions,
for computing data transformations and other mathematical calculations
- probability functions,
for computing quantiles of statistical distributions
and the significance of test statistics
- random number functions,
for simulation experiments
- sample statistics functions,
for computing means, standard deviations, kurtosis, and so forth
SAS functions are documented in SAS Language: Reference.
Chapter 2 discusses the use of date and time
and lagging and differencing functions.
Chapter 3, "Date Intervals, Formats, and Functions,"
contains a reference list of date and time functions.
Formats, Informats, and Time Intervals
Base SAS software provides
formats to control the printing of data values,
informats to read data values,
and time intervals to define the frequency of time series.
See Chapter 3 for more information.
Copyright © 1999 by SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.
