The basics of using the ODS for data visualization

As was discussed in Chapter 5, Managing Data Reporting in SAS, SAS created the ODS in a very early version of SAS to simply output graphics. Since then, the ODS has become the basic function within SAS that enables graphical output from SAS. From the time the ODS was invented until about 2000, graphics were generally seen as print graphics, in that they were not anticipated to be output to the web or to be interactive. In fact, reports in general, regardless of whether they contained only tables, or graphics and tables together, were formatted for printing.

Even if those reports were never actually printed, they were consumed in a printed context, such as through a person reading a PDF or Word document online. We saw in Chapter 5, Managing Data Reporting in SAS, how the ODS could be used with plotting PROCs to output graphics files that could be saved in graphics format (for example, *.jpg). The approaches behind reporting directly...