SAS online glossaries:Base
From sasCommunity
<< Back to SAS online glossaries
BASE SAS Glossary Preview
- To comment on an individual term or its definition, click Review/Add Comments links, then Edit.
- To comment on the glossary group as a whole, click and edit the discussion tab above.
When making comments, please add your signature by clicking this icon on the Edit toolbar: 
Contents |
argument
- in a SAS function or CALL routine, any of the values or expressions that a user supplies within parentheses and on which the function or CALL routine performs the indicated operation.
- in macro processing, a character string that is used by a macro function.
- in syntax descriptions, any keyword in a SAS statement other than the statement name.
batch job
a job (program) that is submitted to the operating system for batch processing. See also batch mode .
batch mode
a method of executing SAS programs in which a file that contains SAS statements plus any necessary operating environment commands is submitted to the computer's batch queue. After you submit the program, control returns to your computer, and you can perform other tasks. Batch mode is sometimes referred to as running in the background. The program output can be written to files or printed on an output device.
BY group
a group of observations or rows that have the same value for a variable that is specified in a BY statement. If more than one variable is specified in a BY statement, then the BY group is a group of observations that have a unique combination of values for those variables.
BY-group processing
the process of using the BY statement to process observations that are ordered, grouped, or indexed according to the values of one or more variables. Many SAS procedures and the DATA step support BY-group processing. For example, you can use BY-group processing with the PRINT procedure to print separate reports for different groups of observations in a single SAS data set.
DATA step
in a SAS program, a group of statements that begins with a DATA statement and that ends with either a RUN statement, another DATA statement, a PROC statement, the end of the job, or the semicolon that immediately follows lines of data. The DATA step enables you to read raw data or other SAS data sets and to use programming logic to create a SAS data set, to write a report, or to write to an external file.
DATA step interface
a feature of SAS software that enables you to use the DATA step to interact with other components of SAS such as the macro facility or the Output Delivery System (ODS).
fileref
a name that is temporarily assigned to an external file or to an aggregate storage location such as a directory or a folder. The fileref identifies the file or the storage location to SAS. See also libref.
libref
a name that is temporarily associated with a SAS library. The complete name of a SAS file consists of two words, separated by a period. The libref, which is the first word, indicates the library. The second word is the name of the specific SAS file. For example, in VLIB.NEWBDAY, the libref VLIB tells SAS which library contains the file NEWBDAY. You assign a libref with a LIBNAME statement or with an operating system command.
multidimensional database
a specialized data storage structure in which data is presummarized and cross-tabulated and then stored as individual cells in a matrix format, rather than in the row-and-column format of relational database tables. The source data can come either from a data warehouse or from other data sources. MDDBs can give users quick, unlimited views of multiple relationships in large quantities of summarized data. Short form: MDDB.
SAS data file
a type of SAS data set that contains data values as well as descriptor information that is associated with the data. The descriptor information includes information such as the data types and lengths of the variables, as well as the name of the engine that was used to create the data. See also SAS data set and SAS data view.
SAS data set
a file whose contents are in one of the native SAS file formats. There are two types of SAS data sets: SAS data files and SAS data views. SAS data files contain data values in addition to descriptor information that is associated with the data. SAS data views contain only the descriptor information plus other information that is required for retrieving data values from other SAS data sets or from files whose contents are in other software vendors' file formats. See also descriptor information.
SAS data view
a type of SAS data set that retrieves data values from other files. A SAS data view contains only descriptor information such as the data types and lengths of the variables (columns) plus other information that is required for retrieving data values from other SAS data sets or from files that are stored in other software vendors' file formats. SAS data views can be created by the SAS DATA step and by the SAS SQL procedure.
