In reply to Michelle Buchecker.

Michelle, thank you for your comment and paper reference. My rationale is this. When we are dealing with "small" data as the dictionary/sashelp tables, using SAS data step vs PROC SQL is more a matter of personal preference (code readability and clarity) rather than a matter of speed optimization. Who cares whether a data step runs 1.5 seconds vs 1.4 seconds for PROC SQL! Optimizing this might be a classical case of solving the wrong problem (see Are you solving the wrong problem?) Regarding the upcase() function, I prefer a little redundancy in my code for the sake of clarity. Besides, who knows if in the future SAS releases those uppercase values in the dictionary/sashelp tables are going to stay.