Know Your Sources 阂 Decoding Inputs / Outputs of any SAS Program.

One of the biggest challenges in SAS Programming is that there is no standard way to generate Traceability Matrix for SAS programs with their inputs and outputs. As time progresses programs are updated and there is no way to do impact analysis for these updates on existing programs. This paper talks about how to generate Traceability Matrix for any SAS program along with their inputs / outputs and their version numbers in SAS Drug Development Environment (SDD). It decodes the JobLog XML files (.jlgxml) and generates report which can help to carry out impact analysis for any updates to existing source code. The Challenge There is no standard way to tell what are the various input / output datasets and files in a given SAS program. The problem arises when one of the source program (for e.g. SAS macro) used as an input to other source programs is updated and it becomes challenge to find out what kind of impact these updates can have on other programs. The Solution If we can generate a Matrix with Source program name and various inputs / outputs and if we can also capture version numbers of these inputs/outputs it would be very easy to trace and analyze that if any update is done on one of the input program what kind of Impact this update will have on other source programs. Luckily SAS does provide solution to above challenge in the form of SAS Drug Development (SDD). It’’s a control Environment System which lets you generate various versions of the files their by regulating various updates being done to these files. When SAS programs are run and saved in SDD they generate an XML file manifest which is called Job Log XML file. These files contain details about various inputs and outputs along with their version number and other details. The next challenge is how to decode these files to generate Traceability Matrix to carry out Impact Analysis. JobLog XML (.jlgxml) files When any SAS program is run in SDD it generates results with information about various Inputs/ Outputs. Right click the job and click Save AS which should open another dialog box to save the results of the current program run in form of Joblog XML file.