Date:         Thu, 21 Dec 2006 12:28:55 -0500
Reply-To:     Gerhard Hellriegel <gerhard.hellriegel@T-ONLINE.DE>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Gerhard Hellriegel <gerhard.hellriegel@T-ONLINE.DE>
Subject:      Re: Linking 2 datasets

Jared,
best thing I think, is to generate a format from your name-dataset.
I don't know the type of your site id, I assume it is char. So you should
define a format like:

proc format lib=library;
  label $site
     "1" = "Elmo"
     "2" = "Ernie"
     "3" = "Bert"
     "4" = "Oscar";
run;

If you have many names in a dataset, don't retype them, but use:

data cntlin;
  length start $8 label $10;
  set your_dataset;
  fmtname="SITE";
  type = "C";
  start = siteID;
  label = name;
run;
proc format lib=library cntlin=cntlin;
run;

This format you assign to siteID wherever you want the long names to occure
in a report. For changes you have only to rerun the format generation.

Another possibility is the generation of a view which merges the 2 datasets
by siteID. But a format is much faster and more elegant for that.

Regards,
Gerhard


On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 09:02:31 -0800, webonomic <webonomic@GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>I have 2 datasets:
>
>Dataset1:
>SiteID        Q1             Q2
>1               2.3             11002
>2               4.7             39209
>1               1.2             20983
>3               2.2             40989
>2               0.2             23492
>4               0.7             10983
>4               0.9             77549
>3               2.1             29403
>3               3.0             84302
>
>Dataset2:
>SiteID        Name
>1               Elmo
>2               Ernie
>3               Bert
>4               Oscar
>
>
>(My real datasets have more observations and more variables.)
>
>Table 2 is only really used for Reporting purposes.  Ie. to make
>reports more readable, I want to use the Name rather than the SiteID.
>
>What I usually do is create a Name variable in Dataset1 permanently and
>work with this permanent dataset.  It works, but if the Name ever
>changes, I have re-run some programs to update the dataset.  This does
>not seem ideal.  I don't like hardcoding it into the dataset, nor would
>I want to create this variable everytime I want to do data analysis.
>
>So when I do Proc Tabulate or Proc Report and other procs on Dataset1,
>what methods are available to pull in the Name from Dataset2?
>Should I continue doing it the way I am used to?  How do other people
>solve this?
>
>TIA,
>
>Jared