SAS Data Sets (1)

Basic Concepts

SAS Data Sets

So far, you've seen the components and characteristics of SAS programs, including how they reference SAS data sets and other SAS files. Now let's take an in-depth look at SAS data.

Overview of SAS Data Sets

As you saw with our sample program, for many of the data processing tasks that you perform with SAS software, you

access data in the form of a SAS data set
use SAS programs to analyze, manage, or present the data.

Conceptually, a SAS data set is a file consisting of two parts: a descriptor portion and a data portion. Some SAS data sets also contain an index, which enables SAS software to locate records in the data set. (The data sets you work with in this module do not contain indexes.)

SAS data set structure