This month’s Tech Tip is from Althea Oenga, Institutional Reporting Analyst, Pace University (aoenga@pace.edu). “I have been at Datatel, Banner, and PeopleSoft institutions and would have appreciated this helpful hint. It would have saved me a lot of time! Thanks, Althea!”

Banner has a series of Validation Tables with naming convention STVXXXX, where XXXX is an abbreviation for the type of data that is being reported. For example, STVNATN is a table of possible nation codes. I know that we are going “paperless” and that I should always connect to the database to read this information, but there are times when I would like to have a printed version of the data in a particular table for a number of reasons. Perhaps I’d like to keep a copy of the information in the event I am unable to access the database or just so I can make notes. Here is a short SAS program that uses the print procedure and a macro call to generate a pseudo “Data Dictionary” from these validation tables. Keep in mind that the database will always have the most accurate and up-to-date information and that you should always check it before making decisions. Since validation tables don’t have large amounts of data, it takes only a few seconds to read all 200+ tables. Warning: you will probably never want to print the entire PDF because it will be too many pages - you may want to print just the pages that interest you.

OPTIONS NODATE NONUMBER;
%LET OUTPUT_FOLDER = Z:\ALTHEA\SOFTWARE\BANNER;
ODS PDF file = "&OUTPUT_FOLDER\BANNER_DATA_DICT_012210w..PDF"
style=styles.default;
%MACRO VALIDATION(SCHEMA,TABLE,DESC);
 PROC SQL;
  CREATE TABLE &TABLE AS
  SELECT *
  FROM &SCHEMA..&TABLE;
 QUIT;
 TITLE " &TABLE: &DESC ";
  ODS ESCAPECHAR='^';
  PROC PRINT DATA=&TABLE contents="&table" ;
    FOOTNOTE1 H=8pt F=Arial J=l 'Created by AOenga' j=r 'Source: Banner';
    FOOTNOTE2 H=8pt F=Arial J=l "On &sysdate9" j=r 'Page ^{thispage} of ^{lastpage}';
  RUN;
%MEND;
%VALIDATION(SATURN,STVACAT,DEGREE AWARD CATEGORY);
%VALIDATION(SATURN,STVACCG,ACTIVITY CATEGORY);
.
. <macro call for all other tables>
.
ODS PDF CLOSE;