14Jun

ERROR 22-322: Syntax error, expecting one of the following: a name, *.

This is one of the classic SAS errors that you can get from PROC SQL and it can be thrown by a number of things. Missing out a comma in a list of variables on a SELECT statement is one situation that will do it, as will having an extraneous one. As I discovered recently, an [...]

08Jun

ERROR: Invalid value for width specified – width out of range

This could be the beginning of a series on error messages from PROC SQL that may appear unclear to a programmer more familiar with Data Step. The cause of my getting the message that heads this posting is that there was a numeric variable with a length less that the default of 8, not the best of [...]

24Apr

Self-hosted web analytics tracking

It amazes me now to think how little tracking I used to do on my various web “experiments” only a few short years ago. However, there was a time when a mere web counter, perhaps displayed on web pages themselves, was enough to yield some level of satisfaction, or dissatisfaction in many a case. Things [...]

03Jul

JavaScript: write it yourself or use a library?

I must admit that I have never been a great fan of JavaScript. For one thing, its need to interact with browser objects places you at the mercy of the purveyors of such pieces of software. Debugging is another fine art that can seem opaque to the the uninitiated since the amount and quality of [...]

23Jul

SAS9 SQL Constraints

With SAS9, SAS Institute have introduced the sort sort of integrity constraints that have been bread and butter for relational database SQL programs but some SAS programmers may find them more restrictive than they might like. The main one that comes to my mind is the following: proc sql noprint; create table a as select [...]

06Jun

SQL Developer Java error

I tried starting up Oracle’s SQL Developer last night so that I could add a listing if my hillwalking blog posts to my website’s site map with a spot of PHP scripting. However, all that I got was something like that which you see below: I must confess that this one threw me. The solution, [...]