On 28 Jun 02 06:33:42 GMT, alte@uni-greifswald.de (Dietrich Alte) wrote:

>"Fehd, Ronald J." wrote: >> surely you are not storing program files: *.sas >> and data sets *.sas7bdat >> in the same directory? > >Why not?

It's generally seen as a good idea to separate programs and data.

>Every project has one directory. >I don`t want to have so many sub-directories for every kind of >software I use in the project. > >How do you organize your directories?

We have completely different structures for clinical data and programming areas. Data are stored by project and study, with separate subdirectories for data delivery and qc, before the data are moved up to the protocol level using standard tools.

Within the programming area are prod, qa and development areas, each with project/study directory paths, controlled by a version control system which moves the programs to the correct area as and when appropriate. There are further subdirectories for format libs, output files, log files, etc.

Not everyone would benefit from this sort of approach, but in a multi-project, multi-programmer environment it's very useful indeed.

The underlying rationale and benefit is that there's always a chrystal-clear audit trail of both data and programs...

-- Ace in Basel - bruce dot rogers at roche dot com