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Home - Lessons - SAS Certified Programming Training (Base Programming) - M4 — Combining Data Sets - The BY group merge and FIRST. and LAST. for group-level summaries

SAS Certified Programming Training (Base Programming) The BY group merge and FIRST. and LAST. for group-level summaries

SAS Certified Programming Training (Base Programming)

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M1 — The SAS Programming Model and the Exam

The two-step model: DATA step to read and write, PROC step to analyse

The programming environment: program data set, work library, output

Exam structure: 60 to 65 questions, 120 minutes, 68 percent to pass

Submitting code, reading the log and fixing the first error quickly

Choosing column processing or row processing for a reporting need

Walking a practice question and marking the data step it requires

M2 — The DATA Step: Reading and Writing

The LIBRARY statement, the DATA statement and the RUN statement

INFILE, INPUT and the INFORMAT that parses a raw text file

Reading delimited and fixed-width files with the right import options

The SET statement, the WHERE clause and the KEEP option

DROP, RENAME and LABEL for readability and for downstream work

Writing to a permanent library and appending with the LOCK statement

M3 — Transforming Data in the DATA Step

Assignment statements, expressions and the EVAL function

Functions on dates, characters and numbers and their formats

FORMAT and INFORMAT pairs and the default format library

The OUTPUT statement, the BY statement and FIRST. and LAST. variables

Arrays and the DO loop for a repeated calculation

Missing values, the missing functions and the IS MISSING test

M4 — Combining Data Sets

Sorting with PROC SORT and the BY statement in the DATA step

The MERGE statement with one-to-one, many-to-one and inner joins

The BY group merge and FIRST. and LAST. for group-level summaries

The APPEND and UPDATE statements for combining and revising rows

Reading inline data with the DATALINES statement inside a program

Checking a merge result with PROC FREQ on the key variables

M5 — The PROC Step and the Procedures That Matter

PROC PRINT, PROC CONTENTS and PROC VARNAME for orientation

PROC MEANS with summary options and the CLASS and WAYS statements

PROC FREQ with tables, cross tabulation and the OUTPUT statement

PROC SQL with select, join, group by and the create table statement

PROC REPORT with column definition, compute and grouping

PROC TRANSPOSE and PROC EXPORT to reshape and deliver a data set

M6 — Functions, Formats and Date Handling

Character functions: SCAN, SUBSTR, INDEX, TRIM and CATX

Numeric functions: ROUND, INT, CEIL, FLOOR and the missing value set

Date and datetime handling with MDY, YEAR, MONTH and DAY

Creating and applying custom formats with the FORMAT procedure

INFORMAT lookups that read a date written in a different format

The YRDIF and AGE functions for tenure and age calculations

M7 — Macro Programming, SAS/STAT and ODS

Macro variables, %LET and macro quoting with the percent and ampersand

Macro parameters, the %DO loop and a reusable reporting macro

Global and local symbol tables and where a name resolves

SAS/STAT basics: the t-test, the chi-square and the linear model

ODS output destinations for HTML, RTF, PDF and flat files

ODS graphics, table styles and a report deliverable that ships

M8 — Capstone: Build a SAS Reporting Program

Ingest two raw extracts and validate row counts against expectations

Clean the data in the DATA step and standardise the date formats

Merge the reference and transaction data with a by-group merge

Build the summary with PROC SQL and PROC MEANS and cross-check the figures

Package the output as a macro with parameters for the report period

Deliver the report through ODS and write the exam revision plan

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