"The title of Kevin Smith's new book, PROC TEMPLATE Made Easy, is perfect. He tackles a topic that many approach with dread, if at all, in a simple and straightforward manner. Working with the same data set throughout the book (SASHELP.CLASS) not only means that the reader can really try any of the examples, as we all have that data, but it also is a great way to show how to build on an existing template to get more and more functionality.

"The discussion of inheritance alone is worth the price of the book. I know it will help me to create style templates that are more robust and flexible and save a lot of redundant coding. Also, to finally have a comprehensive look at table templates is great. Whether you want to tweak a template supplied by SAS to get procedure output to look a little different or create your own that you can call from a DATA step, the information is all here.

"Very few SAS users are aware of the power of PROC TEMPLATE, and Kevin's done a great job of showing that. Nice job."