Mastering the SAS DS2 Procedure: Advanced Data Wrangling Techniques

Enhance your SAS® data wrangling skills with high precision and parallel data manipulation using the new DS2 programming language.

This book addresses the new DS2 programming language from SAS, which combines the precise procedural power and control of the Base SAS DATA step language with the simplicity and flexibility of SQL. DS2 provides simple, safe syntax for performing complex data transformations in parallel and enables manipulation of native database data types at full precision. It also introduces PROC FEDSQL, a modernized SQL language that blends perfectly with DS2. You will learn to harness the power of parallel processing to speed up CPU-intensive computing processes in Base SAS and how to achieve even more speed by processing DS2 programs on massively parallel database systems. Techniques for leveraging Internet APIs to acquire data, avoiding large data movements when working with data from disparate sources, and leveraging DS2’s new data types for full-precision numeric calculations are presented, with examples of why these techniques are essential for the modern data wrangler.

While working through the code samples provided with this book, you will build a library of custom, reusable, and easily shareable DS2 program modules, execute parallelized DATA step programs to speed up a CPU-intensive process, and conduct advanced data transformations using hash objects and matrix math operations.