Monday, August 31, 2009

Making Code Review Painless

ABSTRACT:
Code review is an essential step in the development of concise and accurate SAS® programs. It is a required verification step in performing validation in a regulated environment. This paper will present techniques and a macro that can be freely downloaded to automate this task. The %coderev macro will perform many of the common tasks during a code review including:

1. Spell checking headers and comments
2. Reviewing all input and output datasets of the program
3. Comparing defined macro variables versus macro variable usage
4. Checking for multiple macro calls that are not in a macro library
5. Evaluating hard code logic
6. Evaluating sort order of all datasets

These tasks are normally performed by an independent reviewer instead of the original programmer. By automating the tasks, the code review process will ensure that the smallest mistake can be captured through reports to ensure the highest quality and integrity. What normally is a dreaded task can now be done with ease.
Thanks to Sy Truong, Meta-Xceed, Inc, Fremont, CA

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