SAS interview question, SAS material, SAS experienced interview question

1) Explain what is SAS? What are the functions does it performs?

SAS means Statistical Analysis System, which is an integrated set of software products.

• Information retrieval and data management
• Writing reports and graphics
• Statistical analysis, econometrics and data mining
• Business planning, forecasting and decision support
• Operation research and Project management
• Quality Improvement
• Data Warehousing
• Application Development

2) Explain what is the basic structure of SAS programing?

The basic structure of SAS are

• Program Editor
• Explorer Window
• Log Window

3) What is the basic syntax style in SAS?

To run program successfully, and you have following basic elements:

• There should be a semi-colon at the end of every line
• A data statement that defines your data set
• Input statement
• There should be at least one space between each word or statement
• A run statement

For example: Infile ‘H: \StatHW\yourfilename.dat’;

4) Explain what is Data Step?

The Data step creates an SAS dataset which carries the data along with a “data dictionary.” The data dictionary holds the information about the variables and their properties.

5) Explain what is PDV?

The logical area in the memory is represented by PDV or Program Data Vector. At the time, SAS creates a database of one observation at a time. An input buffer is created at the time of compilation which holds a record from an external file. The PDV is created following the input buffer creation

6) Mention what are the data types does SAS contain?

The data types in SAS are Numeric and Character.

7) In SAS explain which statement does not perform automatic conversions in comparisons?

In SAS, the “where” statement does not perform automatic conversions in comparisons.

8) Explain how you can debug and test your SAS program?

You can debug and test your SAS program by using Obs=0 and systems options to trace the program execution in log

9) Mention what is the difference between nodupkey and nodup options?

The difference between the NODUP and NODUPKEY is that, NODUP compares all the variables in our dataset while NODUPKEY compares just the BY variables

10) Mention the validation tools used in SAS?

For DataSet : Data set name/ debug Data set: Name/stmtchk
For Macros: Options: mprint mlogic symbolgen

11) Explain what does PROC print, and PROC contents are used for?

To display the contents of the SAS dataset PROC print is used and also to assure that the data were read into SAS correctly. While, PROC CONTENTS display information about an SAS dataset.

12) Explain what is the use of function Proc summary?

The syntax of proc summary is same as that of proc means, it computes descriptive statistics on numeric variables in the SAS dataset.

13) Explain what Proc glm does?

Proc glm performs simple and multiple regression, analysis of variance (ANOVAL), analysis of covariance, multivariate analysis of variance and repeated measure analysis of variance.

14) Explain what is SAS informats?

SAS INFORMATS are used to read, or input data from external files known as Flat Files ASCII files, text files or sequential files). The informat will tell SAS on how to read data into SAS variables.

15) Mention the category in which SAS Informats are placed?

SAS informats are placed in three categories,

• Character Informats : $INFORMATw
• Numeric Informats : INFORMAT w.d
• Date/Time Informats: INFORMAT w.

16) What function CATX syntax does?

CATX syntax concatenate character strings remove trailing and leading blanks and inserts separators.

17) Explain what is the use of PROC gplot?

PROC gplot has more options and can create more colorful and fancier graphics.