Processing of hierarchical data with hash objects Part 1 – Creation of XML documents

Abstract

AbstractThe introduction of hash objects with SAS® version 9 brought about new opportunities for novel programming techniques. The recent discovery that hash tables can contain even other hash objects, also known as the ‘hash of hashes’, opens the door to their application to hierarchical data structures. This is because hierarchies, like the XML structure, can be considered ‘containers within containers’, and with the hash-of-hashes technique, tables can contain tables, thereby becoming compatible with hierarchical formats. This has the potential of being useful for processing clinical data in XML format. The advent of Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) and its increasing reliance on XML technology for handling clinical trial data implies that clinical SAS® programmers now have to get used to hierarchical data structures. Clinical trial data set submissions now have to be accompanied by metadata such as define.xml. The traditional SAS® data sets are tabular and relational, whereas the...