Date:         Fri, 19 Nov 2004 10:23:27 -0800
Reply-To:     "Choate, Paul@DDS" <pchoate@DDS.CA.GOV>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Choate, Paul@DDS" <pchoate@DDS.CA.GOV>
Subject:      Re: Use of Variable With 21 Characters
Comments: To: "Michael F. Murphy" <Michael.F.Murphy@KP.ORG>

Hi Michael -

Numbers are stored by default as 8 bytes, so your storage and IO will
increase by 32/21 or 52% for this one set of information.

Personally I'd keep Group, Subgroup, and Family Account as strings, because
they don't have numeric value per se, but the date as a SAS date (numeric)
so you don't have to convert it.  You can sort on the four primary keys for
storage and perhaps index on other keys.

hth

Paul Choate
DDS Data Extraction
(916) 654-2160

-----Original Message-----
From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael
F. Murphy
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 10:16 AM
To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Use of Variable With 21 Characters

Dear SAS-L'ers

I'm reviewing a membership system that includes a variable
called "Membship", created in the days when variable names could not be
more than 8 characters long.

Membship is a concatination of four variables:
Group number converted to a 5-character string
Subgroup number converted to a 3-character string
Family Account number converted to an 8-character string
Effective date of health care coverage converted to a 5-character string.

Hence Membship is a 21 character string.

We are trying to decide whether to keep this variable or replace it with
the following four numeric variables: Group, Subgroup, Family_Acct, and
Eff_Date. I am having trouble coming up with reasons for keeping Membship,
but there may be reasons for keeping it. Can anyone think of reasons for
keeping this 21-character variable instead of the four numeric variables?

Thanks.