Components

Controls constitute the graphical user interface, and include interface elements that you have seen in Web forms like Check Boxes, List Boxes, and Entry Fields. There are also controls that are specific to SAS/AF such as the Table Viewer (which displays SAS table data).

Models are another type of component. In contrast to the controls that are displayed to the user in the interface, models work behind the scenes to distribute data to controls. For example, to get a List Box to display a list of SAS libraries, you would attach a Library List model to the List Box.

Controls are sometimes called visual components, and models are sometimes called non-visual components. Controls and models are also generically called objects, especially in the context of object-oriented programming.

The controls that are supplied by SAS always appear as native controls on a platform, even if you ported your application to that platform. This means that if you wrote an application on Solaris, and then ported it to Windows 7, the application would look exactly like other Windows 7 applications.

However, if you run a graphical user interface application on a character-based display (usually on mainframes), the controls (for example, the entry fields and list boxes) are represented as characters, which means the controls will look different from the examples in this document.