In my previous posts, I've covered many aspects of DS2 (previous posts are listed at the bottom of this post). It's time to wrap up by offering a few more final details.
Whilst DS2 provides a wide range of data types, not all types are supported by all output data structures. The BASE engine, for example, has not been updated to allow storage of anything other than numeric and character variables in SAS datasets, so an attempt to create a data set with a variable of type BIGINT will be met with a warning message:
WARNING: BASE driver, creation of a BIGINT column has been requested, but is not supported by the BASE driver. A DOUBLE PRECISION column has been created instead.
The traditional SAS numeric variable is known in this context as a double precision column!
Paired with the SAS Embedded Process, DS2 enables you to perform processing similar to SAS in completely new places, such as in-database processing in relational databases, the SAS High-Performance Analytics grid and the DataFlux Federation Server.
If you want to know more, consider attending Mark Jordan's pre-conference tutorial at this year's SAS Global Forum. In the seminar, entitled "What Will DS2 Do for You?", you will learn the basics of writing and executing DS2 code. Mark promises to shows attendees how to explicitly control threading to leverage multiple processors when performing data manipulation and data modeling. He will demonstrate how DS2 improves extensibility and data abstraction in your code through the implementation of packages and methods. It's an extra fee event ($155) but could add a powerful extra string to your SAS bow!
DS2:
NOTE: DS2. Data Step Evolved?
NOTE: DS2, Learn Something New!
NOTE: DS2, SQL Within a SET Statement
NOTE: DS2, Threaded Processing
NOTE: DS2, Final Comments
NOTE: DS2, Final, Final Comments