Date:         Wed, 25 Jan 2006 09:08:13 -0800
Reply-To:     "Choate, Paul@DDS" <pchoate@DDS.CA.GOV>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Choate, Paul@DDS" <pchoate@DDS.CA.GOV>
Subject:      Re: Clause vs. Statement
Comments: To: evilpettingzoo97@AOL.COM
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Ken - Shooting from the hip....an analogy:

Clauses are to SQL what statements are to a datastep.

I've always thought of it as clauses are the equivalent of statements in
SQL because Proc SQL doesn't permit data step statements.  The datastep
predates Proc SQL in SAS by over a decade, when SQL was developed they
needed a way to use statement functionality in SQL.

Hope that doesn't miss the target by too far...

Paul Choate
DDS Data Extraction
(916) 654-2160

-----Original Message-----
From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Ken
Borowiak
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 8:45 AM
To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Clause vs. Statement

Dear SAS-L,

  I have observed that in the SAS programming community that people
sometimes use the terms 'clause' and 'statement' interchangeably. My
gut-feeling is that this is more of an issue of semantics and that
there is distinction between the two. Unfortunately, I have not been
able to find a reputable resource distinguishing the two, in general
(and yes, I did search the archives, but to no avail). A recent paper
at WUSS makes an argument that the WHERE of the DATA step and PROC SQL
are different.


http://www.wuss.org/proceedings05/WUSS%202005%20Proceedings/pdf_files/da
t
a_warehousing_and_database_management/dwdb_where_the_statement.pdf

  If 'clause' and 'statement' are indeed different, what are the
characteristics distinguishing the two?

 Kind Regards,
  Ken Borowiak