SAS Portlets, Widgets, Themes and Tutorials for sale

All SAS programs consist of a sequence of "steps". There are only two kinds of steps:

• Data Step
• PROC Step 

DATA step

A DATA step creates a SAS dataset (a collection of data together with a "data dictionary", which defines the variables and their properties). Data must be in the form of a SAS dataset before it can be analysed by SAS procedures.

In the example SAS program, these lines create the dataset CLASS from raw data input:

DATA CLASS;
INPUT NAME $ SEX $ AGE HEIGHT WEIGHT;
CARDS;
Edmund   M 35 59.0  99.5
Baldric     M 31 57.3  83.0
Bob         F 21 47.3  61.0
... (more data lines)

PROC step

A PROCedure step calls a SAS procedure to analyse or process a data.

In the example SAS program, these lines call two SAS procedures to analyze the CLASS dataset:

PROC PRINT;
PROC MEANS;
VARIABLES HEIGHT WEIGHT;

A SAS program can contain any number of DATA and PROC steps. The SAS statements in each step are executed all together.