Summary

This chapter gave an overview of alternatives to debugging and troubleshooting SAS code, specifically data step code. First, we discussed the importance of well-formed and well-formatted code, especially with respect to ETL protocols in a data warehouse that might live on for a long time. We demonstrated how to leverage messages in the log for guidance when troubleshooting data steps, and how to use the PUT statement to write values to the log during a data step. Next, we looked specifically at ways to troubleshoot do loop code and went over debugging functions that SAS has built into Enterprise Guide. Finally, we covered approaches to debugging and troubleshooting macros.

Because the SAS code is so complicated, building data step code that processes big data usually turns into a big project with a lot of code. With more code, there are more opportunities to need to edit the code, especially to accommodate improvements in the data warehouse. This chapter gave a practical...