Monday, 19 October 2009

NOTE: Cascading Prompts in V9.2 Stored Processes

Continuing my Twitter theme today, I can say that the Twittersphere was busy last week with several mentions of SAS V9.2's introduction of cascading prompts, i.e. the ability for a user's selection from one prompt to influence the choices offered in a second. A simple example is of prompt #1 offering a list of car manufacturers and prompt #2 offering the models of car that are produced by the selected manufacturer.

This is a major enhancement, and one that will be appreciated by anybody who has struggled to achieve this functionality in earlier releases. Using prompt #2 to offer all models of car from all manufacturers regardless of the user's selection for prompt #1 has always been a big no-no for my clients.

The SAS-BI blog featured an article (heralded on Twitter by sasbi and also by technolero) titled "Cascading Prompts in SAS Stored Processes take the Cake!", and csimien tweeted a link to an SGF 2009 paper entitled "Dynamic Prompts Make Data Cascading Easy: Introducing New Features in SAS® 9.2 Prompt Framework". Both are a good read.