Writing Code in SAS Enterprise Guide

Susan J. Slaughter, Avocet Solutions, Davis, CA

Lora D. Delwiche, University of California, Davis, CA
ABSTRACT
If you are a SAS programmer who has avoided using SAS Enterprise Guide because you think it's only good for
point-and-click, then this paper is for you. You may be surprised to learn that SAS Enterprise Guide offers
programmers many advantages over Display Manager. We'll show you different ways to write and run code, explain
how SAS Enterprise Guide can help to organize your work, and discuss issues unique to coding in SAS Enterprise
Guide.

INTRODUCTION
Using SAS Enterprise Guide, you can manipulate data and run reports without ever writing a single line of SAS code.
So its not surprising that many SAS programmers believe that SAS Enterprise Guide is only useful to nonprogrammers. If you love the SAS language, why would you ever want to use SAS Enterprise Guide?
It turns out that there are several reasons why you might want to do just that. SAS Enterprise Guide offers
programmers a variety of ways to run code. You can type a program like you do in Display Manager, but you can also
use the point-and-click features of SAS Enterprise Guide to generate programs that you can then modify. In addition,
SAS Enterprise Guide organizes your work into projects making it easy to find your programs, logs, and results; and
the process flow diagrams show at a glance how everything in your project fits together.
However, writing programs in SAS Enterprise Guide does require learning a new environment with new windows and
a new system for organizing your work. As with any new skill, there is a learning curve. The goal of this paper is to
ease that transition by explaining SAS Enterprise Guide from a programmers perspective.
In SAS Enterprise Guide there are often three or four (or even more) ways to do the same thing. This paper makes no
attempt to show all ways, but instead shows the easiest ways. By exploring the menus and function keys, and by
right-clicking, you can easily find other ways.
This paper was written using SAS Enterprise Guide 6.1, but also applies to versions 4.3 and 5.1 with only slight
differences. If you are using SAS Enterprise Guide 4.2, you will find that the windows and menus are similar, but
some of the more advanced programming features are not available.

WRITING A NEW PROGRAM

To open an empty Program window, select Program New Program from the menu bar. Then type your program.
The Program window has a color-coded, syntax-sensitive editor similar to the one in Display Manager.

Select
Program New Program
and type your program

Starting with SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3, the editor offers autocompletion. As you type, the editor tries to guess what
you want. A pop-up list will appear with possible keywords. You can click the list to select the word you want, or press
the Spacebar, Enter or Tab keys to select the highlighted word, or just ignore it and keep typing.

CUSTOMIZING THE EDITOR

Most people like the Autocomplete feature, but if you would rather not use it, you can turn it off by selecting Tools
Options SAS Programs, and clicking the Editor Options button to open the Enhanced Editor Options window.
This window has tabs labeled General, Appearance, Autocomplete and Indenter.

In addition to turning autocompletion on or off, you can customize many other features of the editor such as the font
size, color scheme, indention, and line numbering.

INTEGRATED SYNTAX HELP

Integrated syntax help is another feature that was added to the editor starting with SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3. If you
hover the cursor over a keyword, the editor will display information about the syntax and usage of that keyword along
with links to relevant documentation. Here, for example, is the syntax help for a WHERE statement:

Hover cursor over

keyword to display
syntax

RUNNING YOUR PROGRAM

When your program is ready to run, click Run at the top of the Program window. To run a part of a program, first
highlight the part you want to run. Then click the down-arrow next to Run at the top of the Program window, and
select Run Selection from the drop-down menu.

Click Run or
select Run Selection

If you have more than one SAS server, then you can change the server that SAS Enterprise Guide will use by clicking
the down-arrow next to Selected Server at the top of the Program window. SAS Enterprise Guide will submit your
program to SAS on the currently selected server, and display the results.

Results display
automatically

REPLACING RESULTS
Every time you rerun your program, a window will open asking you whether you want to keep the results from your
previous run, or replace the results. Generally speaking, you will want to click Yes to replace the results. Otherwise,
your project will quickly fill up with nearly identical results.

VIEWING THE LOG

By default when you run your program, if there are any errors, then the log will be automatically displayed. If there are
no errors, the results will be displayed, but you can easily display the log by clicking the Log tab at the top of the
Program window.

SAS log
Icon indicating
program with error

If you see a red X on the program icon

, this indicates that the program produced errors (either error messages

or data errors such as invalid dates). A yellow caution sign on your program icon
contains warnings (but no errors). You can click the down-arrow
to go to the previous error or warning. If you click
arrow
display a list of all the errors, warnings and notes.

, indicates that your log

to go to the next error or warning, or the up

Log Summary, then SAS Enterprise Guide will

HIDING WRAPPER CODE

Logs in SAS Enterprise Guide are like logs in Display Manager. They show your program along with any error
messages, warnings, and notes. However, whenever you submit a program in SAS Enterprise Guide, wrapper code is
added to the beginning and end of your program to take care of housekeeping functions such as closing any
unwanted ODS destinations. By default, the log will include the wrapper code. If you don't wish to see the wrapper
code, you can turn it off by selecting Tools Options Results Results General and unchecking Show
generated wrapper code in SAS log.

THE PROJECT PARADIGM IN SAS ENTERPRISE GUIDE

In SAS Enterprise Guide, all your work is organized into projects. Projects help to organize your work by keeping track
of your code, logs, and results so you don't have to worry about what's where.

Project
Tree

Workspace displaying
Process Flow

The project is displayed in the Project Tree window in the upper-left corner and in the Process Flow window on the
right. The space where the Process Flow appears is called the workspace. The Process Flow shares the workspace
with many other windows including the Program window and results windows. You can switch between these windows
by double-clicking their names in the Project Tree. The Project Tree displays your project in a hierarchical tree
diagram while the Process Flow displays your project in a process flow diagram. Icons representing your code and
results appear in both the Project Tree and Process Flow.
To run your entire project (which can contain multiple process flows), click the down-arrow next to Run at the top of a
Process Flow window and select Run Run Project. To run a single process flow, click the down-arrow next to Run
at the top of that particular Process Flow window and select Run Run Process Flow.
You can have as many projects as you wish, but only one can be open at a time. However, if you want to see more
than one project at a time, there is a simple work around. Simply open a new SAS Enterprise Guide session to display
a second project.

THE PROJECT LOG

The project log combines all the logs from each step in a project so that you don't have to open each one separately.
Project Log at the top of the Log window, then click
By default, the Project log is turned off. To turn it on, click
Turn On at the top of the Project Log window. The Project Log will stay on until you turn it off by clicking Turn Off.
Turning the log off does not clear it, it just stops new logs from being added to the project log. You can clear the
project log by clicking Clear Log at the top of the Project Log window.

RENAMING CODE AND SAVING A PROJECT

By default, your program is given the generic name "Program." This is all right, but not terribly informative. It is a good
idea to give your programs more descriptive names by right-clicking their program icons in the Project Tree or
Process Flow and selecting Rename from the pop-up menu.
You can save your project by selecting File Save Project As and navigating to the location where you want to
save your project. The next time you open the project, everything will be the way you left it.

Select File
Save Project
As
Right-click icon
Select Rename

OPENING AND RUNNING AN EXISTING PROGRAM

As a SAS programmer you are sure to have lots of programs that you have already written. You can open an existing
SAS program by selecting Program Open Program from the menu bar, and navigating to the location where your
program is stored. This window shows a program named SplitData that was written in Display Manager and then
opened in SAS Enterprise Guide.

Select File Open Code

and navigate to code file

Using the Program window, you can edit programs that were written in Display Manager and run them just the same
as programs that have been written in SAS Enterprise Guide. At this point, this project contains two programs
(RegionFreq and SplitData) and their results.

EMBEDDED PROGRAMS VS. UNEMBEDDED PROGRAMS

Because SplitData was opened from an external file, its icon includes a little shortcut arrow.
The arrow
indicates that the project contains a reference to the program, but the program itself is not saved as part of the

project. Because RegionFreq was written in SAS Enterprise Guide, its icon does not include an arrow.
RegionFreq is saved inside the project, but SplitData is not.
Code that is saved as part of a project is called embedded code; code that is saved outside of a project is
unembedded. You can change whether or not a file is embedded. To do this, right-click the program icon in the
Project Tree or Process Flow, and select Properties from the pop-up menu. A Properties window will open for the
program. In the General page, click the Embed button to embed an external program in your project, or the Save As
button to save the program in an external file.

Click Embed or
Save As button

Whether its better to embed programs in your project or save them as separate files is your choice. One point to
consider is that programs that are not embedded can be shared by more than one project while embedded programs
can only be used by the project that contains them. Either way, its important that you understand where your
programs are stored so you dont accidentally end up with multiple copies of a program when you only want one (or
vice versa).

COPYING PROGRAMS GENERATED BY A TASK

So far this paper has simply shown SAS Enterprise Guide as an environment for writing and running programs, but
you can also use SAS Enterprise Guides point-and-click features to generate programs.
In SAS Enterprise Guide, tasks generate SAS procedure code. Before you can use a task, you must first open your
data set. To open a data set, select File Open Data from the menu bar, and navigate to your data set. The data
set will be displayed in a Data Grid. The following Data Grid shows a data set named World that contains data about
all the countries in the world.

Data set displayed

in Data Grid

When you open a task, it will use the active data set. The active data set is the one you have accessed most recently.
You can change the active data set by viewing it in a Data Grid or by clicking the icon of the data set you want in the
Project Tree or the Process Flow before you open the task.
This example uses the Summary Tables task, but the process for copying programs is similar for all tasks. The
Summary Tables task writes PROC TABULATE code. To open Summary Tables, select Tasks Describe
Summary Tables from the menu bar (or Describe Summary Tables from above a Data Grid). A Summary Tables
window, like the one pictured below, will open. The first thing you do in any task is assign variables to task roles by
dragging variable names to the list of task roles. In this window, the variables Region and PopGroup have been
assigned to serve as classification variables.

First drag variables

to task roles

Then Click
Summary Tables

The second thing you do in the Summary Tables task, is arrange your table. To do that, click the Summary Tables

option in the selection pane on the left.

In the Summary Tables page, you drag variables from the list of available variables to the area labeled Preview. To
find out more about the Summary Tables task, you may want to read the paper, Introduction to Summary Tables in
SAS Enterprise Guide, listed in the reference section at the end of this paper.

Drag variables
to Preview area

Once you are satisfied with the arrangement of your table, click the Run button. SAS Enterprise Guide will run the
task and display the results.

To see the program generated by the task, click the Code tab above the results. You cannot edit the program
generated by a task, but you can make a copy of the program and edit the copy. The quickest way to do this is to type
something (anything, including a space or Enter) in the Program window.

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Type something in
Program window to
make a copy

A window will open asking if you want to create a copy of the code. Click the Yes button, and SAS Enterprise Guide
will open a new Program window containing a copy of the code.

The Process Flow now includes an icon labeled Code for Summary Tables. This is the copy of the code. You can
edit the copy of the code. You can also use this code in Display Manager by cutting and pasting, or saving this code
as an unembedded code file and opening it in Display Manager.

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INSERTING CUSTOM CODE INTO THE PROGRAM GENERATED BY A TASK

While you cannot edit the program generated by a task, it is possible to insert code into the program. To do that,
reopen the task by double-clicking its icon in the Project Tree or the Process Flow. Then click the Preview code
button in the lower left corner of the task window.

Click
Preview code
button

A Code Preview window will open for that task. Click the Insert Code button.

Click
Insert code

A User Code window will open displaying the code written by SAS Enterprise Guide. This window will show all the
locations in the program where you can insert your own code. Find the place where you want to add code, and
double-click the words <double-click to insert code>.

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Double-click
<double-click to insert code>

An Enter User Code window will open. Type the code you want to insert and click OK.

In the task window, click the Run button. SAS Enterprise Guide will run the task using the code you inserted.

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LINKING ICONS IN THE PROCESS FLOW

Every program shown in this paper has used the World data set. However, looking at the Process Flow, you can see
that task icons are automatically connected to the data they use, but program icons are not.

You can add links to make relationships between data sets and programs more clear. To add a link, right-click the
icon that you want at the beginning of the link (in this case, the World data set), and select Link item to from the popup menu.

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A Link window will open showing all the items to which you can link. Select one, and click OK.

To add more links, repeat the process. Here is the process flow diagram with the World data set linked to each of the
program icons. Notice that links you add use a dashed line instead of a solid line.

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There is another reason why you may want to add links to your process flow. When you run a process flow, SAS
Enterprise Guide executes it from upper-left to lower-right, following the branches of the process flow. You can use
links to explicitly control the order in which items run. You can also rearrange icons by dragging and dropping them in
the Process Flow window.

ADDING NOTES
As a programmer, you already know that it is important to use comments to document your work. Notes are text files
that you can use to document your work. To add a note for an entire process flow, click the background of the
Process Flow window and select File New Note from the menu bar. To add a note for a particular item in your
project (such as a program or task), click its icon in the Project Tree or Process Flow window and select File New
Note from the menu bar. A Note window will open. You can type any text you want in this window.

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LIBNAMES IN SAS ENTERPRISE GUIDE

Up to this point, all the examples in this paper have referred to data sets using direct referencing such as
PROC FREQ DATA = 'c:\EG Data\World';
WHERE YearInd >= 1990;
TABLES Region;
When SAS Enterprise Guide sees a reference like this, it dynamically assigns a libref with a name something like
ECLIB000. Thats fine if you dont need to specify any data engines or advanced options. But if your data are more
complex, you may need more control. There are many ways to define a libref in SAS Enterprise Guide. Some of them
are discussed below, starting with the most basic, and working to the most complex.

PUTTING A LIBNAME STATEMENT IN YOUR CODE

You can always write your own LIBNAME statements to create librefs just as you would in Display Manager. For the
PROC FREQ example, you could use this:
LIBNAME MyData 'c:\EG Data';
PROC FREQ DATA = MyData.World;
WHERE YearInd >= 1990;
TABLES Region;

USING OPTIONS TO AUTOMATICALLY EXECUTE CODE

There are several options that allow you to specify code that will be automatically executed every time you run
something in SAS Enterprise Guide. If you frequently use the same libref, then this may save you a lot of trouble.
Open the Options window by selecting Tools Options from the menu bar. In the selection pane on the left, click
the SAS Programs option. In the SAS Programs page, check Insert custom SAS code before submitted code,
and click the Edit button.

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In the Edit window, type the code you want to be run automatically. This could be a LIBNAME statement, an
OPTIONS statement, or any code that you want to be submitted every time you run anything in SAS Enterprise
Guide.

USING AN AUTOEXEC PROCESS FLOW TO AUTOMATICALLY EXECUTE CODE

You can have only one project open at a time, but you can have multiple process flows in a single project. If you
create a process flow and name it Autoexec, then SAS Enterprise Guide will automatically run that process flow every
time you open the project. To create a new process flow, select File New Process Flow from the menu bar.
Then right-click the name of that new process flow in the Project Tree and select Rename from the pop-up window.

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Once you have created a new process flow and named it Autoexec, then you can put anything that you want in it. For
example, you can open a Program window and type LIBNAME or OPTIONS statements. Then the next time you open
that project, a window will open asking if you want to run the Autoexec process flow.

RULES FOR VARIABLE NAMES

By default, SAS Enterprise Guide uses the system option VALIDVARNAME = ANY (meaning that names must be 32
characters or fewer in length, and can contain any character including blanks). In Display Manager the default is
VALIDVARNAME = V7 which follows the standard rules for SAS names (32 characters or fewer in length, start with a
letter or underscore, and contain only letters, numerals, or underscores). If you write a program that produces a SAS
data set (such as PROC TRANSPOSE or PROC IMPORT), then the names of variables in that data set may be
considerably different than variable names produced by the same exact code in Display Manager. Adding the
statement
OPTIONS VALIDVARNAME = V7;
to your code will fix this. If you use this option often, you may want to run this statement automatically using an
Autoexec process flow or the Options window as described above.

FORMATTING CODE
If you open a program and find that it is messy and hard to read, SAS Enterprise Guide can help with that. Just rightclick in the Program window and select Format Code from the pop-up window, and your program will be tidied up.

CONVERTING A PROGRAM TO A PROCESS FLOW

If you have a complex program, you may want to convert it to a process flow. First open the program. Then select
Program Analyze Analyze for Program Flow from the menu bar. In the Analyze SAS Program window click

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the Begin analysis button. SAS Enterprise Guide will identify each DATA and PROC step and the relationships
between them. To create a process flow, click the Create process flow button.

SPLITTING THE WORKSPACE

By default, you see only one thing at a time in the workspace (one process flow, or one Program window, or one
result). You can split the workspace to display two items. Click the down-arrow next to the icon of a screen
on
the menu bar, and select either Stacked or Side By Side from the pull-down menu. Here is a workspace that has
been split side-by-side with a program and results displayed.

CONCLUSIONS
SAS Enterprise Guide offers programmers a new way to write and run code. If you have never used SAS Enterprise
Guide, it will take you a while to get used to the new environment. But once you learn how to use it, you may well
decide to make SAS Enterprise Guide your primary SAS environment.

REFERENCES
Central Intelligence Agency (2007). The World Factbook. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html.
Delwiche, L. D. & Slaughter, S. J. (2012). The Little SAS Book: A Primer, Fifth Edition. SAS Institute, Cary, NC.
Slaughter, S. J. & Delwiche, L.D. (2013). Introduction to Summary Tables in SAS Enterprise Guide. Toronto Area
SAS Society, March 2013, http://susanslaughter.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/tass-2013-summarytables.pdf.
Slaughter, S. J. & Delwiche, L. D. (2010). The Little SAS Book for Enterprise Guide 4.2. SAS Institute, Cary, NC.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Susan Slaughter and Lora Delwiche are the authors of The Little SAS Book: A Primer which is published by SAS
Institute. The authors may be contacted at:
Susan J. Slaughter
(530)756-8434
susan@avocetsolutions.com

Lora D. Delwiche
(530) 752-9321
llddelwiche@ucdavis.edu

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS
Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are
trademarks of their respective companies.

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