Getting quickly metadata information on your datasets could be useful in some context of conditional execution of SAS programs (e.g.: Don't execute this step if empty dataset). Different methods exists to achieve that: using metadata functions, using Proc contents, or dictionary tables.

This tips and tricks will describe different methods which can be used to extract metadata information from your datasets :

• Use SAS function together with macros
• Use Proc Contents but store information in dataset as the place of report
• Use dictionary tables.

All the methods will be used on a sample dataset and we will compare them on the basis of the pro's and con's.

You have some SAS experience and would like to get information on your metadata.