Consider this primitive data set:

data vtest ; input ID CD: $1. AMT ; cards ; 1 Y 10 2 N 20 2 Y 30 3 N 40 3 Y 50 3 Y 60 ; run ;

and even more primitive SAS SQL code run against it:

proc sql ; create view vtest_view as select ID , CD = "Y" as A , calculated A and (AMT > 5) as B from vtest ; create table vtest_sum as select ID , sum (A) as SUM_A , sum (B) as SUM_B from vtest_view group ID ; quit ;

This results in the following SAS SQL

ERROR: sqlplan internal error: Cannot find symbol B, var=4, tag=0001. This message can be caused by attempting to make correlated references between two different items on a single FROM clause.

This happens under both Windows adn AIX UNIX running the same 9.2. Although I kind of comprehend what the message alludes to, I still fail to see how that can be an excuse for 2 reasons.

First, the error message disappears, and the processing completes error- free, if instead of the *view* VTEST_VIEW I create a *table* and reference it in the ensuing statement.

Second, if I create a completely equivalent *DATA step* view, say

data ds_view / view = ds_view ; set vtest ; A = (CD = "Y") ; B = (A and AMT > 5) ; run ;

and let the summarizing step consume it instead of the *SQL view*, it has no problem running normally, either.

(If anyone is interested why I need a view in the first place, in the real life the mocked-up CD="Y" condition is *much* more involved, and I do not want SAS to sift through the computations twice for performance reasons - otherwise I would simply make the boolean expressions arguments of the SUM SQL function in a single SQL step.)

Looks like a veritable bug to me. Anyone thinks it is a feature?

Kind regards ------------ Paul Dorfman Jax, FL ------------