Great post. MMMMIIIIKKKKEEEE gave an excellent paper at SGF last year that described the use of data templates like this, with the addition of integrity constraints (I think integrity constraints are woefully underused by the SAS community, including by me : ). His paper introduces the "User Data File Template Validation Methodology (UDFTVM)". With that, you get all the benefits of a data template that defines data set attributes, and when you load data into the template structure, the data is automatically validated! Very cool. The only thing I don't like about Mike's talk is that I had to give a validation talk in the same room, following his. : P

Mike's paper is Validating User-Submitted Data Files with Base SAS®.