SAS is optimal for statistics but clumsy for publishing report-quality tables. XML offers a new way to integrate SAS with publishing software. To implement, SAS was taught a standard XML vocabulary for tables. This means adding three capabilities to SAS: importing the vocabulary, exporting the vocabulary, and manipulating the XML vocabulary as XML.

The creation of finely structured documents such as statistical tables in an electronic submission can be automated with electronic documents that contain instructions for database software and publishing software, but no content. Documents with instructions for their own creation, but no content, have been termed "documents that create themselves."

This paper discusses how to reduce the programming burden and increase the quality of statistical tables by adding the new software technology of XML[2] to the familiar SAS-based table creation methods prevailing in the pharmaceutical industry today.