I want to get some records from a DB2 table. IDs for the rows that I want are given in a SAS data set.

A simple solution, using PROC SQL, would be to join the DB2 table to the SAS data set, using the IDs as a key. But this would be very slow because the DB2 table is very large.

To speed processing of the DB2 table, I can use pass-through SQL. But then I can't join the DB2 table to the SAS data set.

I think this issue has been discussed before. A popular solution is to read the ID values from the SAS data set, then incorporate a list of ID values into the SQL query. There is a limit, however, to the number of values that can be listed in a SQL query -- so sometimes the list must be broken up across several queries.

Some of you have confessed to writing macros to do this. I would be most grateful if you would share your code.

Many thanks and best wishes, Paul