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Business Intelligence Books - Debugging SAS Programs: A Handbook of Tools and Techniques
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List Price: $47.95
Our Price: $47.95
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: SAS Publishing
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.14
EAN: 9781580259279
ISBN: 1580259278
Label: SAS Publishing
Manufacturer: SAS Publishing
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 360
Publication Date: 2001-09-24
Publisher: SAS Publishing
Studio: SAS Publishing
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Editorial Reviews:
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Crack SAS coding problems quickly! Discover how SAS identifies problems; what the SAS log really means; common DATA step, PROC, and SAS macro problems and their solutions; and a quick reference of error messages. Debugging SAS Programs: A Handbook of Tools and Techniques is the ""go-to"" guide that helps you solve the most common problems that occur in the SAS DATA step, in base SAS PROCs, and in SAS macro code. The author covers a broad range of programming problems, from syntax errors to complex logic errors. The numerous examples will help you understand and eliminate these errors--and identify ways to avoid them from the start. Topics include how to read the SAS log; how to interpret error, note, and warning messages; and how to solve problems that might occur in the DATA step, base SAS PROC steps, and SAS macros.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Kick Out the Jams
Comment: Expert SAS programmer Burlew provides various techniques for interpreting and preventing programming errors in this hefty, (and expensive) technical book from SAS Publishing. While there is a great deal of useful information, the book awkwardly combines the simple and the advanced. For example, chapters 1 and 6 explain automatically generated error messages in SAS logfiles. A great many of these errors are either self-explanatory, unnecessary to understand in the detail presented here, or may not be included in your own program logs. Still, it is very helpful to have these listed and explained in a compact form.
The value of three other chapters will also depend on the experience of the user and the type of software used. One very long chapter is devoted to debugging errors in macros; if you don't use macros, these chapters are of limited use. Another chapter, "Debugging SAS DATA Steps with the DATA Step Debugger," is apparently only for SAS for Windows software. Furthermore, the correct programming is superimposed on very small pictures resembling Windows screens; it is frustrating to read the resulting tiny font size.
Chapter 3, "Debugging SAS Language Programs," is the most helpful one for the intermediate level user. One of the difficulties in SAS and other languages is that a program may run and produce output, but contain undetected errors. Burlew explains a variety of clever options statements and SAS language statements that improve your ability to detect logical, syntactic, and semantic errors. Another nice feature is an Appendix that describes how to build the data sets that are used as exemplars throughout the book.
Chapters are as follows:
1 .Understanding the Types of Errors in SAS Programs, p. 24
2. Reading the SAS Log and Interpreting SAS Messages, p. 29
3. Debugging SAS Language Programs, p. 45
4. Debugging SAS DATA Steps with the DATA Step Debugger, p. 109
5. Debugging SAS Macro Language, p. 139
6. Base SAS Messages, p. 207
7. Macro Facility Messages, p. 293
Two appendices begin on page 325, and an index on page 345. I can recommend this book for experienced users, especially those who know and use macros. (NOTE: Burlew has written a book titled "SAS Macro Programming Made Easy" that may be helpful.) Another guide that will help prevent data set programming errors is the somewhat easier, "Cody's Data Cleaning Techniques Using SAS Software," by Ron Cody.
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