Recently, I was tasked with developing a SAS program to phase out tedious, error-prone process of transcribing a few key numbers from hundreds of item summary tables to a dozen one-page summary tables. To reduce end-user confusion, the revised reports needed to resemble the current layout and format as much as possible. Since the key statistics change across subgroups and span several item summary tables, a single tabulate or report procedure wouldn’t be sufficient. It appeared that traditional ODS reporting was out.
Other reporting methods were explored, specifically DATA NULL reporting which allows the dynamic use of variables—via macro variables—and provides the layout control that would be needed. Due to the monospace appearance of these reports, however, DATA NULL reporting seemed to be out as well.
Fortunately, ODS DATA Step Object’s ability to blend the layout control of DATA NULL reporting with the formatting control of traditional ODS would help save the day. with ODS DATA Step Object, SAS programmers can turn raw data into production quality reports ready for distribution. The ODS DATA Step Object is a powerful Base SAS feature that is available (in preproduction) as of version 9.1.3 and is able to generate production quality PDF reports directly since it provides SAS programmers simultaneous control over report layout and formatting.
This is the first in a series of papers that will document the evolution from a reporting process that is currently only 10% SAS to one that approaches 100% SAS.
The code discussed in this paper was developed with SAS 9.1.3-SP4 running under Windows XP Professional-SP2. The code was developed specifically for the PDF destination, you may experience some nuances when applying these techniques to other destinations.
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