DATASOURCE Procedure

Example 12.1 BEA National Income and Product Accounts

(View the complete code for this example.)

In this example, exports and imports of goods and services are extracted to demonstrate how to work with a National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) file.

From the "Statistical Tables" published by the United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, the relation of foreign transactions in the Balance of Payments Accounts (BPA) are given in the fifth table (TABNUM=’05’) of the "Foreign Transactions" section (PARTNO=’4’). Moreover, the first line in the table gives BPAs, while the eighth gives exports of goods and services. The series names __00100 and __00800 are constructed by two underscores followed by three digits as the line numbers, and then two digits as the column numbers.

The following statements put this information together to extract quarterly BPAs and exports from a BEANIPA type file:

/*- assign fileref to the external file to be processed --------*/

filename ascifile "%sysget(DATASRC_DATA)beanipa.data" recfm=v lrecl=108;

title1 'Relation of Foreign Transactions to Balance of Payment Accounts';
title2 'Range from 1984 to 1989';

title3 'Annual';
proc datasource filetype=beanipa infile=ascifile
                interval=year
                outselect=off
                outkey=byfor4;

   range from 1984 to 1989;
   keep __00100 __00800;

   label __00100='Balance of Payment Accounts';
   label __00800='Exports of Goods and Services';

   rename __00100=BPAs __00800=exports;
run;

proc print data=byfor4;
run;

 /*- assign fileref to the external file to be processed --------*/

filename ascifile "%sysget(DATASRC_DATA)beanipa.data" recfm=v lrecl=108;

title1 'Relation of Foreign Transactions to Balance of Payment Accounts';
title2 'Range from 1984 to 1989';

title3 'Annual';
proc datasource filetype=beanipa infile=ascifile
                interval=year
                outselect=off
                outkey=byfor4
                out=foreign4;

   range from 1984 to 1989;
   keep __00100 __00800;

   label __00100='Balance of Payment Accounts';
   label __00800='Exports of Goods and Services';

   rename __00100=BPAs __00800=exports;

run;

proc contents data=foreign4;
run;
proc print data=foreign4;
run;

The results are shown in Output 12.1.1, Output 12.1.2, and Output 12.1.3.

Output 12.1.1: Listing of OUTBY=byfor4 of the BEANIPA Data

Relation of Foreign Transactions to Balance of Payment Accounts

Range from 1984 to 1989

Annual

Obs	PARTNO	TABNUM	ST_DATE	END_DATE	NTIME	NOBS	NINRANGE	NSERIES	NSELECT
1	1	07	1929	1989	61	0	6	2	0
2	1	14	1929	1989	61	0	6	1	0
3	1	15	1929	1989	61	0	6	1	0
4	1	20	1967	1989	23	23	6	2	1
5	1	23	1929	1989	61	0	6	2	0
6	2	04	1929	1989	61	0	6	1	0
7	2	05	1929	1989	61	0	6	2	0
8	3	05	1929	1989	61	0	6	1	0
9	3	14	1952	1989	38	0	6	2	0
10	3	15	1952	1989	38	0	6	7	0
11	3	16	1952	1989	38	0	6	1	0
12	4	05	1946	1989	44	44	6	1	1
13	5	07	1929	1989	61	0	6	1	0
14	5	09	1929	1989	61	0	6	1	0
15	6	04	1929	1989	61	0	6	3	0
16	6	05	1929	1948	20	0	0	2	0
17	6	07	1929	1948	20	0	0	1	0
18	6	08	1929	1989	61	0	6	3	0
19	6	09	1948	1989	42	0	6	1	0
20	6	10	1929	1948	20	0	0	1	0
21	6	14	1929	1948	20	0	0	1	0
22	6	19	1929	1948	20	0	0	1	0
23	6	20	1929	1989	61	0	6	2	0
24	6	22	1929	1989	61	0	6	2	0
25	6	23	1948	1989	42	0	6	1	0
26	6	24	1948	1989	42	0	6	1	0
27	7	09	1929	1989	61	0	6	1	0
28	7	10	1929	1989	61	0	6	2	0
29	7	13	1959	1989	31	0	6	1	0

Output 12.1.2: CONTENTS of OUT=foreign4 of the BEANIPA Data

Relation of Foreign Transactions to Balance of Payment Accounts

Range from 1984 to 1989

Annual

The CONTENTS Procedure

Alphabetic List of Variables and Attributes
#	Variable	Type	Len	Format	Label
3	DATE	Num	4	YEAR4.	Date of Observation
1	PARTNO	Char	1		Part Number of Publication, IntegerPortion of the Table Number, 1-9
2	TABNUM	Char	2		Table Number Within Part, DecimalPortion of the Table Number, 1-24
4	exports	Num	5		Exports of Goods and Services

Output 12.1.3: Listing of OUT=foreign4 of the BEANIPA Data

Relation of Foreign Transactions to Balance of Payment Accounts

Range from 1984 to 1989

Annual

Obs	PARTNO	TABNUM	DATE	exports
1	1	20	1984	44
2	1	20	1985	53
3	1	20	1986	46
4	1	20	1987	40
5	1	20	1988	48
6	1	20	1989	47
7	4	05	1984	3835
8	4	05	1985	3709
9	4	05	1986	3965
10	4	05	1987	4496
11	4	05	1988	5520
12	4	05	1989	6262

This example illustrates the following features:

You need to know the series variables names used by a particular vendor in order to construct the KEEP statement.
You need to know the BY-variable names and their values for the required cross sections.
You can use RENAME and LABEL statements to associate more meaningful names and labels with your selected series variables.

Last updated: June 19, 2025