Exploring DICTIONARY Tables and SASHELP Views

SAS users can quickly and conveniently obtain useful information about their SAS session with a number of read-only SAS data views called DICTIONARY tables or SASHELP views. At any time during a SAS session, information about currently defined system options, libnames, table names, column names and attributes, formats, indexes, and more can be accessed and captured. This paper explores the purpose of DICTIONARY tables and views, how they are accessed, and what information is available to SAS users.