Hi folks,

There's something about natural join behavior in SAS that I don't understand. I have the following three tables (some columns omitted for simplicity):

Table: state Columns: stateCode

Table: regDistrict Columns: stateCode, regDistCode

Table: county Columns: stateCode, countyCode, countyName, regDistCode

Now I create two views:

create view regDistrictView as select * from regDistrict natural join state;

create view countyView as select * from county natural join regDistrictView;

The resulting views contain columns as follows:

View: regDistrictView Columns: stateCode, regDistCode

View: countyView Columns: stateCode, regDistCode, stateCode, countyCode, countyName

Now my question is, why is the stateCode column duplicated in countyView, when it is NOT duplicated in regDistrictView??? Thanks in advance for any tips.

s/KAM