Use the Group command in a procedure to concurrently process a set of commands in one pass of the table. Groups aggregate commands so that they are issued concurrently against each record in the table which can significantly reduce processing time.
Only record-based and certain procedure operation commands are appropriate for use within a group. These commands include: Age, Assign, Benford, Cancel, Classify, Comment, Compare, Count, Crosstab, Duplicates, Else, End, Export, Extract, Gaps, Histogram, Join, Let, List, Loop, Merge, Profile, Report, Sequence, Statistics, Stratify, Summarize, Total and Verify.
Note: The If, Index, Sort and all Relations commands are not valid within a Group. Also, using the presort parameter or issuing the Age, Benford, Classify, Histogram and Stratify commands to GRAPH output is not valid within a Group.
Groups are used only within procedures. Within a procedure you can include one or more simple, conditional or nested groups. Before you create a group, you should be familiar with the concepts involved in creating procedures. For more information, see Procedure Overview.
For a more detailed description using the Group command to process multiple record type files see Multiple-Record-Type Files.