This week's SAS tip is from Michael Tuchman and his innovative book PROC DOCUMENT by Example Using SAS. Michael's book fills an important gap. For instance, in her review of the book, SAS user and senior statistical analyst Wendi Wright said: "Currently, I believe PROC DOCUMENT is a highly underused procedure and after reading this book, I believe this will change. The book shows how easy and how useful the procedure really is."

Perhaps this week's excerpt will be useful in your own work.

The following excerpt is from SAS Press author Michael Tuchman's book "PROC DOCUMENT by Example Using SAS." Copyright © 2012, SAS Institute Inc., Cary, North Carolina, USA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (please note that results may vary depending on your version of SAS software).

Naming ODS Output

In order to start communicating with SAS about the documents that you create, you need to know a few details about how SAS procedure output is stored within the document. In particular, you need to know how ODS names this output. This is important because there is a direct correspondence between this ODS naming convention and the location in the document where your output will be stored.

Every element of output that is created by a SAS procedure and sent to an ODS destination must be given a name. Each output object is given an ODS path. An element of output refers to tables, graphs, crosstabs, equations, and reports. This book refers to these objects as output objects.

This path consists of multiple components separated by periods. The number of components depends on the options that you choose when you run the procedure. Table 2.1 shows a few examples of ODS paths.

In order to know the pathname that ODS gives to your output, you must first understand how to find the complete ODS name of your output as ODS produces it. For this, you use the ODS TRACE statement.

Read more about Michael Tuchman and his book here.