[Blindmath] Answers to How to Look at a Humongous SAS Data Set Using JAWS V. 17.0

[Zach]

I'm writing in hopes that what I've found out will be of use to someone else
in the near future. I am blind, use JAWS and SAS. My master's thesis project
looks at the relationship between season and heat stress, and the production
of milk and milk quality in the Southeastern United States. Between 2014 and
2016, several universities in the Southeast received a multi-dollar grant to
survey dairy farmers and collect qualitative and quantitative data
concerning farm practices, location, facility design, and genetics' and
examine their impact on milk production and quality parameters. The result
of the survey and a subset of farms' production records were compiled into
two data tables, one an MS Excel and one a SAS data set. 

 

The latter data set containing the subset of farms' production records was
so large, my usual attempts to examine the data with PROC PRINT resulted in
freezing my PC. I didn't know just how large the data set was, how many
columns or observations there were, not even what the column headers were. I
wanted to share the piece of code that showed me the information I needed to
understand the layout of the data set. It is pasted below:

 

PROC CONTENTS DATA="C:\...\dhia_data.sas7bdat" OUT=DHIA_DATA;

RUN;

 

PROC PRINT DATA=DHIA_DATA;

RUN;

 

That is it. Very simple. In addition, if you want to look at the first ten
observation/rows of data, try: 

 

PROC PRINT DATA="C:\...\dhia_data.sas7bdat"(OBS= 10);

RUN;

 

Or say perhaps the data between observation 10 and 15: 

 

PROC PRINT DATA="C:\...\dhia_data.sas7bdat"(FIRSTOBS= 10 OBS= 15);

RUN;

 

I know you could figure this out for yourself by doing google searches, but
hopefully this will save someone out there like me looking for the answers
in one location. There is also a way to obtain the information via PROC SQL.
I've just not yet been able to get the code to work. So hopefully for those
needing to look at big data sets in SAS, this has been helpful. I have since
found out my data set is 412 columns by 85923 observations.

 

 

Regards,

 

Zac

 

Zachary Mason

M.S. Student

Animal and Dairy Sciences

Mississippi State University