Making SAS Interactive (Part 2): Using %window and %display

Its the world of GUI. And you are left nowhere if you don't provide the users, the luxury (or rather fulfill the basic needs) of giving a Graphical User Interface. This holds good even for SAS.

SAS came up with the tool called SAS/AF and SAS EG which provides the users with a brilliant GUI and thus making their lives so eeaasssy.. However, not many of us would have bumped into this brilliant macro tool called %WINDOW and %DISPLAY which is present in BASE SAS9 which satisfies the basic needs of having a GUI. Here I take a small dive into the SAS ocean again, exploring the functionalities of these two macros.

%WINDOW: This creates the basic window that needs to be popped up upon execution. We can specify the window attributes here like the color/width/height,etc. You could also specify the position of the text that is to be displayed and the input parameters that are to be read.

%DISPLAY: This actually invokes the window that has been defined in the %window program.

Below is a simple illustration of the %window and %display invocation:

%window test_win color=blue

/*dimension for the window*/
icolumn=15 irow=10
columns=90 rows=45

/*Content of the window*/
#3 @25 "My Window"
attr = rev_video
#5 @10 "Hello Pramod"
attr = underline
;

%display test_win;

The above code displays the output as shown below:

Below, I've demonstrated how we can use this to make SAS interactive. Most of the code is self explanatory, of course with a bit of help from the support.sas.com documentation available at: http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/mcrolref/61885/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a000206734.htm

/* Main window */

%window final color=gray

/*dimension for the window*/
icolumn=15 irow=10
columns=90 rows=75

/*Content of the window*/
#1 @25 "&error_msg"
#3 @15 "Hi &sysuserid." attr = rev_video color=blue @60 "Date: &sysdate9." attr = rev_video color=blue
#5 @25 "Welcome to the Reporting World" attr = rev_video
#8 @35 "Report List"
#11 @15 "1. Class listing" @50 "2. Class Report by Gender"
#13 @15 "3. Class Report by Age" @50 "4. Class freq"
#16 @15 "Enter your Choice:" @35 choice attr=underline
;

/* End of Window Final */

%macro execute;
%let choice=;%display final;

%if &choice=1 %then %do;
 proc print data=sashelp.class noobs;
 run;
%end;%else %if &choice=2 %then %do;
 proc report data=sashelp.class nowd;
 columns sex height weight;
 define sex / group;
 define height /analysis;
 define weight / analysis;
 run;
%end;%else %if &choice=3 %then %do;
 proc report data=sashelp.class nowd;
 columns age height weight;
 define age / group;
 define height /analysis;
 define weight / analysis;
 run;
%end;%else %if &choice=4 %then %do;
 proc freq data=sashelp.class;
 tables sex*age /nocum nopercent;
 run;%end;
%mend execute;

%execute
In the above code, I first display a list of things the use might be interested to see in the %window, and then %display this inside the macro execute. I also read his input into the macro variable choice and then based on his selection, I call the required procedure inside the macro execute.

The output of the above code is as shown below:

Upon entering the value 2 and hitting the enter button, we get the output as shown:

You could experiment more on this and let me know your suggestions/thoughts/ideas...