The SAS Output Data Set

The SASEFAME Interface Engine

The SAS Output Data Set

You can use the SAS DATA step to write the FAME converted series to a SAS data set. This allows the user the ability to easily analyze the data using SAS. The name of the output data set is specified by you on the DATA statement. This causes the engine supervisor to create a SAS data set using the specified name in either the SAS WORK library, or if specified, the USER library. For more about naming your SAS data set see "Characteristics of SAS Data Libraries" in SAS Language: Reference, Version 7.

The contents of the SAS data set include the DATE of each observation, the series names of each series read from the FAME database as specified by the WILDCARD option, and the label or FAME description of each series. Missing values are represented as '.' in the SAS data set. You can use PROC PRINT and PROC CONTENTS to print your output data set and its contents. You can use PROC SQL along with the SASEFAME engine to create a view of your SAS data set.

The DATE variable in the SAS data set contains the date of the observation. It is important to note that FAME frequencies often have a sample unit in parentheses following the keyword frequency. This sample unit is an end-of-interval unit. SAS dates are represented using begin-of-interval notation. For FAME weekly intervals that end on a Friday, FAME reports the date on the Friday that ends the week whereas SAS reports the date on the Saturday that begins the week. A more detailed discussion of how to map FAME frequencies to SAS Time Intervals follows.

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