Summing a Column By Group In a Dataset With Macros

Question

I have a dataset that looks like:

 Month   Cost_Center      Account    Actual    Annual_Budget
 June     53410           Postage       13      234
 June     5342         


        

Answer 1

SAS DATA step behavior is quite complex ("About DATA Step Execution" in SAS Language Reference: Concepts). The default behavior, that you're seeing, is: at the end of each iteration (i.e. for each input row) the row is written to the output data set, and the PDV - all data step variables - is reset.

You can't expect to write Base SAS "intuitively" without spending a few days learning it first, so I recommend using PROC SQL, unless you have a reason not to.

If you really want to aggregate in data step, you have to use something called BY groups processing: after ensuring the input data set is sorted by the BY vars, you can use something like the following:

data Test (keep = Month Account Sum_Actual Sum_Annual /*...your Run_Rate and Over_Budget_Alarm...*/);
    set Combined; /* the input table */
    by Month Account; /* must be sorted by these */

    retain Sum_Actual Sum_Annual; /* don't clobber for each input row */
    if first.account then do; /* instead do it manually for each group */
        Sum_Actual = 0;
        Sum_Annual = 0;
    end;

    /* accumulate the values from each row */
    Sum_Actual = sum(Sum_Actual, Actual);
    Sum_Annual = sum(Sum_Annual, Annual_Budget);
    /* Note that Sum_Actual = Sum_Actual+Actual; will not work if any of the input values is 'missing'. */

    if last.account then do;
        /* The group has been processed.
           Do any additional processing for the group as a whole, e.g.
           calculate Over_Budget_Alarm. */
        output; /* write one output row per group */
    end;
run;