The descriptor portion of a SAS data set contains information about the data set, including

• the name of the data set
• the date and time the data set was created
• the number of observations
• the number of variables.

Let's look at a different SAS data set. The table below lists part of the descriptor portion of the data set Clinic.Insure, which contains insurance information for patients admitted to a wellness clinic. (Likewise, your data set names should be descriptive of the contents of the data set.)

The data set names you've seen in this lesson (Admit, Admit2, Finance, and Insure) have been short, simple names. However, you can use longer and more complex names for your SAS data sets, within certain guidelines. SAS data set names must

• be 1 to 32 characters in length
• begin with a letter (A-Z, including mixed case characters) or an underscore (_)
• continue with any combination of numbers, letters, or underscores.

These are examples of valid data set names: