Technology Tales

Creating placeholder graphics in SAS using PROC GSLIDE for when no data are available

18th March 2012

Recently, I found myself with a plot to produce but there were no data to be presented so a placeholder output is needed. For a lisitng or a table, this is a matter of detecting if there are observations to be listed or summarised and then issuing a placeholder lisitng using PROC REPORT if there are no data available. Using SAS/GRAPH, something similar can be acheived using one of its curiosities.

In the case of SAS/GRAPH, PROC GSLIDE looks like the tool to user for the same purpose. The procedure does get covered as part of a SAS Institute SAS/GRAPH training course but they tend to gloss over it. After all, there is little reason to go creating presentations in SAS when PowerPoint and its kind offer far more functionality. However, it would make an interesting tale to tell how GSLIDE became part of SAS/GRAPH in the first place. Its existence makes me wonder if it pre-exists the main slideshow production tools that we use today.

The code that uses PROC GSLIDE to create a placeholder graphic is as follows (detection of the number of observations in a SAS dataset is another entry on here):

proc gslide;
note height=10;
note j=center "No data are available";
run;
quit;

PROC GSLIDE is one of those run group procedures in SAS so a QUIT statement is needed to close it. The NOTE statements specify the text to be added to the graphic. The first of these creates a blank line of the required height for placing the main text in the middle of the graphic. It is the second one that adds the centred text that tells users of the generated output what has happened.