Most people who work with large data sets understand the importance of only selecting the fields you need from any given table or tables rather than using Select * to select all fields. This leads to more efficient use of system resources, but can be annoying for the programmer who has to type in a long list of fields.

In order to avoid this, one easy tip is to use Enterprise Guide’s interface to select desired fields and then copying and pasting the generated code into your SAS program. An alternative to doing this, however, is to use the Proc SQL Feedback option.

For example, if I want to get a list of fields available in the SQL Dictionary table dictionary.tables for a given libname, I can use the feedback option to get the following log output:

21 proc sql feedback;
22 select *
23 from dictionary.tables
24 where libname = ‘yourlibname’
25 ;
NOTE: Statement transforms to:
select libname, memname, memtype, dbms_memtype, memlabel, typemem, crdate, modate, nobs, obslen, nvar, protect, compress, encrypt, npage, filesize, pcompress, reuse, bufsize, delobs, nlobs, maxvar, maxlabel, maxgen, gen, attr, indxtype, datarep, sortname, sorttype, sortchar, reqvector, datarepname, encoding, audit, audit_before, audit_admin, audit_error, audit_data

from DICTIONARY.TABLES

where libname=’yourlibname’;

I can then copy and paste this listing into my original program and select only those fields I want without having to type them in manually.