Ian,

Ordinarily I would agree with your wish for small simple examples for pedagogical purposes, but, in this instance, the real advantages SAS Component Language offers over the SAS Macro Language for organizing and controlling SAS batch processing don't become readily apparent until a certain level of complexity is reached.

Joe

-----Original Message----- From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Ian Whitlock Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 5:59 PM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: SCL versus Macro

Jack,

I do not know whether what you say is true or not, although I have received the same message that you have. In any case I think it is reasonable to discuss the extent to which SCL is a good replacement for macro, which has also been declared a dead end in terms of development. For this discussion to be reasonable I think it must be based on SIMPLE SMALL EXAMPLES, which do not close the door of discussion to all except those deeply biased by their heavy adoption of SAS/AF, and that clarify why SCL may or may not be an appropriate replacement for macro.

Similarly, any macro code demonstrating advantages of macro should be simple enough to be understood by a good programmer with little experience in macro. That reminds me of one of my best students in a macro class. He was C programmer/manager with practically no experience in SAS, so he had a lot of trouble with SAS syntax when doing exercises, yet he had a great appreciation of what was being taught about macro as shown by the questions that he asked.

I suspect, but have not heard other than in terms of silence, that SI believes batch SAS programming to be a dead end for profits. Perhaps someone should propose such a discussion under a different subject, say "Is batch SAS a dead end?".

Ian Whitlock ================ Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 14:03:20 -0700 Reply-To: Jack Hamilton <jfh@STANFORDALUMNI.ORG> Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" From: Jack Hamilton <jfh@STANFORDALUMNI.ORG> Subject: Re: SCL versus Macro Comments: To: toby dunn <tobydunn@HOTMAIL.COM> In-Reply-To: <BAY101-F25739CC9F3DF5EBC7D8722DE2C0@phx.gbl> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" And isn't AF, and therefore SCL, more or less a dead end? My impression is that SAS will continue to support it, but that it won't get a great deal of new development effort.

-- Jack Hamilton Sacramento, California <snip>