SAS Date Formats Incompatible with SQL Server Date

Question

I\'m fairly new to SAS and recently we migrated some of our SAS datasets to a SQL Server table but we are still using SAS to do our analysis. I have run into a problem when SAS

Answer 1

SAS stores and uses dats as numeric variables. If you had not identified the column srv_edt as a date column when you migrated the database to SQL server everything would now process correctly.

I assume that currently and into the future you will just store the tables in SQL server and all the processing will be in SAS.

You have a few options.

1/ re-migrate the SAS tables but identify all the date, time and datetime columns as just numeric. They all can be stored as 8 byte floating point. The date variables may also be stored (in SQL Server) is long integers. The code would need a slight change so that the macro variables would be numeric.

%let dos_beg_dt1 = %sysfunc(intnx(qtr,&date,-1,beginning));
%let dos_end_dt1 = %sysfunc(intnx(qtr,&date,-1,end));

2/ keep the date, time, and datetime variables in SQL Server format and change the data type of the column when using the data. (Note the reverse will be necessary on output). SQL Server will present the date variables as strings (character) so that your expression above will need to be -

%let dos_beg_dt1 = %sysfunc(intnx(qtr,&date,-1,beginning));
%let dos_end_dt1 = %sysfunc(intnx(qtr,&date,-1,end));

data sample;
set sql.table;

where &dos_beg_dt1 <= (input(srv_edt, yymmdd10.0))  <= &dos_end_dt1;

That to make sure when using SAS processing the type is numeric which is what the input function will do.

3/ keep the date, time, and datetime variables in SQL Server format and change your working to accommodate that fact. That is comparisions will be using character data and output will need to produce characters. SQL Server will present the date variables as strings (character) so that your expression above will need to be -

%let dos_beg_dt1 = %sysfunc(intnx(qtr,&date,-1,beginning), yymmdd10.);
%let dos_end_dt1 = %sysfunc(intnx(qtr,&date,-1,end), yymmdd10.);

data sample;
set sql.table;

where ("&dos_beg_dt1" <= srv_edt) and
   (srv_edt <= "&dos_end_dt1");`

Note double quotes " " required surrounding macro variables as this comparison is numeric.