Preface

Most books on this topic are written for users with little or no experience. These books generally address the basics quite well by presenting syntax and concepts with a sprinkling of examples here and there, but they often fall short of the needs of the power user. A basic understanding of SQL is not what all users want or need. Moreover, with the growing popularity and use of SQL, many users quickly master the basics and are left with nowhere to turn for learning the more advanced topics and features of the language.

I wrote this book to highlight the many features offered by PROC SQL, while providing information about the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) guidelines, as well as non-ANSI features. This book includes features defined in the ANSI standard, plus additional features that have been implemented in PROC SQL. It is intended to serve as a resource to complete users’ mastery of the language while enabling them to perform more complicated tasks.

I also wanted to address the needs of the broad range of SAS users (from intermediate to advanced), including existing SQL users, application programmers, database designers and administrators, statisticians, and systems analysts. In taking this approach, I concentrated on the various ways PROC SQL is used to solve real application problems. This book is intended as a reference for SAS users who want to understand how PROC SQL can be used to perform common, and not so common, tasks. This book complements the SAS SQL documentation very nicely.

This is a book for intermediate and advanced SAS users who want clearly written explanations, examples, and techniques on the SQL procedure, all organized in a helpful and logical way. It is organized so users can get faster, easier, and better results with the SQL procedure without spending substantial amounts of time reading paragraph after paragraph of text or attempting to apply esoteric syntax-oriented examples. This book is the perfect companion for SAS and PROC SQL users who want step-by-step instructions and example code to enhance their data access, manipulation, and presentation prowess.