Efficient extraction of JSON information in SAS using the SCANOVER function

• Main Authors: CHOY, Murphy, SHIM, Kyong Jin
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2013
• Subjects: Computer Engineering; Data Storage Systems
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/4343; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/5346/viewcontent/json.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

JSON, otherwise known as JavaScript Object Notation, is a popular data interchange format which provides a humanreadable format. It is language independent and can be read easily in a variety of computer languages. With the riseof Twitter and other unstructured data, there has been a move to incorporate such data as a way of disseminatinginformation. Twitter currently provides a simple API for users to extract tweets using JSON format. While SAS doesnot currently have a direct way of reading JSON, the SCANOVER function in SAS data step provides user with asimple and effective approach to getting JSON information into SAS datasets. In this paper, we will illustrate twoexamples using this technique.