Some SAS software packages require minimal coding experience to get your work done. However, once you want to do anything advanced, it gets restrictive to use just the predefined options available in the package. At that moment, most users tend to write code. Chances are that if you want to go beyond what SAS already offers as predefined procedures and functionalities, you want to write advanced programs/macros. While we will delve into macros later on in this book, there is an aspect of SAS that is being leveraged less by some users. These are the dictionaries. But what are they and how can they be useful?
Some reasons for using dictionary tables are as follows:
- They hold all the information about SAS libraries, datasets, macros, and external files that are being used in the SAS session.
- It is a read-only view, so there are no chances of it being compromised...