Understanding DATA Step Code Requirements

Note the following requirements and information about using DATA step code to create a scenario:

• Specify the %EVENT macro call to enable the assignment of the standard scenario columns. Place this macro invocation within a conditional statement in your code where you want to write event data as output from the DATA step.
• Any DATA step that includes the &CAPTURE_CHAR_VALUE, &MESSAGE, or &TRIG_TXNS variables must include the LENGTH statement to specify the number of bytes for storing these variables. Here is an example:
  LENGTH &CAPTURE_CHAR_VALUE VARCHAR(500) &MESSAGE VARCHAR(1024) &TRIG_TXNS VARCHAR(*);

  LENGTH &CAPTURE_CHAR_VALUE VARCHAR(500) &MESSAGE VARCHAR(1024) &TRIG_TXNS VARCHAR(*);

  For more information, see LENGTH Statement in SAS DATA Step Statements: Reference.

  IMPORTANT This requirement does not apply to the final DATA step (the DATA step that includes the &OUTPUT_DATASET variable).
• If your DATA step code contains subsetting IF statements, any records that do not meet a specified condition are discarded during a scenario test. This means that you will not see these records in the scenario test Records table. To evaluate these records during the testing phase, you can include a DO statement to retain the records.

  For example, this sample code does not retain any records that do not meet the specified condition:

  if height <= age <= weight;
     %EVENT;

  In contrast, this sample code does retain the records that do not meet the specified condition, but only for testing purposes; no events are generated for those records when the flow is run:

  if height <= age <= weight then do;
     %EVENT;
  end;

• If a scenario requires more than one DATA step to achieve the desired output, you can include sequential DATA steps in a single scenario. Note the following requirements when using this model:
  • The first DATA step must contain the following code:

    data sas_data_set;
    set &INPUT_DATASET;

  • The final DATA step must contain the following code:

    data &OUTPUT_DATASET;
    set sas_data_set;
    %EVENT;

• To reference a scenario parameter, precede the parameter ID with an ampersand (&) and do not enclose it in quotation marks.
  Note: Though formatted similarly in SAS DATA step code, scenario parameters are not SAS macro variables and will not function as such. For example, prepending a scenario parameter with an additional ampersand will not resolve in the way that a SAS macro variable does.
• If you include comments in your DATA step code, do not include SAS keywords in a comment string. Examples of SAS keywords include DATA, DATASET, and SUM.
• For information about input and output, see the next topic, Working with DATA Step Scenario Input and Output.