An elegant use of call execute-Solution

An elegant use of call execute

Solution

Objective : Hello readers. This post provides the solution of my previous post. If you have not read that post please go through it to understand the problem that is being solved here.

The previous post can be found here.

The solution:

So my dear readers, 2 days are over and as promised here is the solution.

Now when we have understood the question and the output required, let us look at the solution.

Below is the code I wrote to solve the problem, I will explain it step by step.

An elegant use of call execute

An elegant use of call execute

Objective : Hello readers. This post aims at solving a typical interview question in an elegant manner using call execute. This question is not really tough but can be a tough nut to crack for an uninformed candidate.

Please note that this post is not an explanation of the working of call execute. For that I will write another post sometime in future.

So the questions we are tackling here goes like this :

I have a transaction dataset which stores all the transactions done by all the bank’s customers in the past month. Now I want you to create a separate dataset for each account id which should contain all the transaction done for that account.

For. E.g. I have 5 account ids and the transaction dataset contains all the 300 transactions done for these 5 accounts. So as final output I want 5 datasets by the name of the account ids and each of those dataset must contains all the transactions for just that account id.

How to create a Cartesian product using a datastep ?

How to create a Cartesian product using a datastep ?

Objective : Hello readers. This post is unlike all my previous posts which deal with one or the other concepts of SAS and explain them in detail. The idea for this post came up from one of the interview questions which I have been asked many times over (and I am asking it now when I am on the other side of the table :-) ).

In one of my previous posts I have compared the datastep merges with SQL joins, but no one ever tells how to do in datastep what is called a Cartesian product in SQL, and which is pretty easy to do in SQL. Interestingly Cartesian product forms tha base of SQl joins, so if we can replicate SQL joins in datastep then we should also be able to replicate Cartesian product..!!

The answer is Yes we can do it, and easily. But you’ll know it only when you see it.

So here is the short and simple way to do it, but before that let me explain for people who don’t know about Cartesian product, what it is and what is a point option(Shhh..this is the key)