Thanks to both David and Venky for their suggestions. I should have said that I was running the query from a GIS using ODBC to link to SAS. Therefore, I assume I can't use Proc SQL. After posting my question I did find a reference in the archives to using SELECT DISTINCT COUNT based on an example from Joe Celko's "SQL for Smarties". I'll try and use that.

John

John M. Power E-CARTA Services 2241 Blenheim Street Vancouver, BC Canada V6K 4J4 Phone: (604) 734-8239 Fax: (604) 733-3943 e-mail: ecarta@telus.net

-----Original Message----- From: Chakravarthy, Venky [mailto:Venky.Chakravarthy@pfizer.com] Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 5:39 AM To: 'John Power'; SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: RE: Selecting records by date using SQL

John,

Assuming that the data is already sorted in descending order, then

Proc Sql INOBS = 15 ;

should produce the desired results. Also note that David's solutions sorts the data for the output and not the input.

Kind Regards,

Venky #****************************************# # E-mail: swovcc@hotmail.com # # Phone: (734) 622-1963 # #****************************************#

-----Original Message----- From: John Power [mailto:ecarta@TELUS.NET] Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2002 6:35 PM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Selecting records by date using SQL

In Access there is a method of selecting, for example, the most recent 15 records. You order the records in descending order by date, then use "SELECT TOP 15 FROM.....". I want to do the same thing in SAS using a SQL Query from an external program. I know how to order the records in descending order, however "TOP" doesn't seem to work. Is there an equivalent command?

Thanks