Glossary

American National Standards Institute

the organization that coordinates the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. ANSI works with the International Organization for Standardization to establish global standards. Short form: ANSI.

ANSI

See American National Standards Institute

authentication

See client authentication

Base SAS

the core product that is part of SAS Foundation and is installed with every deployment of SAS software. Base SAS provides an information delivery system for accessing, managing, analyzing, and presenting data.

catalog

See SQL catalog

client authentication

the process of verifying the identity of a person or process for security purposes.

column

a vertical component of a table. Each column has a unique name, contains data of a specific type, and has particular attributes. A column is analogous to a variable in SAS terminology.

connection string

information that defines how to connect an application to the data. In the DataFlux Federation Server, a connection string identifies the query language syntax that the application submits as well as the information that is required to connect to a data source or data sources.

data set

See SAS data set

data source

a table, view, or file from which you will extract information. Sources can be in any format that SAS can access, on any supported hardware platform. The metadata for a source is typically an input to a job.

data source name

a persistent identifier that is associated with a data source definition. The data source definition specifies how to locate and access a data source, including any authentication (such as a user name and password) that a user must provide. Short form: DSN.

data type

an attribute of every column in a table or database. The data type tells the operating system how much physical storage to set aside for the column, and specifies what type of data the column will contain. It is similar to the type attribute of SAS variables.

data view

See SAS data view

database

an organized collection of related data. A database usually contains named files, named objects, or other named entities such as tables, views, and indexes.

database management system

a software application that enables you to create and manipulate data that is stored in the form of databases. Short form: DBMS.

DataFlux Authentication Server

a component of the DataFlux Data Management Platform that provides a central location for the management of connections between DataFlux clients, DataFlux servers, and native database servers.

DBMS

See database management system

driver

a special-purpose software program that enables two disparate software programs such as an application and an API to interact.

DSN

See data source name

federated DSN

a data source name that references multiple data sources. The data sources can be on the same DBMS, or on a different one.

Federation Server authorization

an authorization process in which a database internal to the DataFlux Federation Server stores security definitions for users and objects. The process returns decisions on the actions that can be taken on resources, based on the requesting user's identity and group memberships.

grouping data source name

See federated DSN

grouping DSN

See federated DSN

library reference

See libref

libref

a SAS name that is associated with the location of a SAS library. For example, in the name MYLIB.MYFILE, MYLIB is the libref, and MYFILE is a file in the SAS library.

metadata server

a server that provides metadata management services to one or more client applications. A SAS Metadata Server is an example.

missing value

a type of value for a variable that contains no data for a particular row or column. By default, SAS writes a missing numeric value as a single period and a missing character value as a blank space.

null value

a special value that indicates the absence of information. Null values are analogous to SAS missing values.

observation

a row in a SAS data set. All of the data values in an observation are associated with a single entity such as a customer or a state. Each observation contains either one data value or a missing-value indicator for each variable.

SAS data file

a type of SAS data set that contains data values as well as descriptor information that is associated with the data. The descriptor information includes information such as the data types and lengths of the variables, as well as the name of the engine that was used to create the data.

SAS data set

a file whose contents are in one of the native SAS file formats. There are two types of SAS data sets: SAS data files and SAS data views.

SAS data view

a type of SAS data set that retrieves data values from other files. A SAS data view contains only descriptor information such as the data types and lengths of the variables (columns) plus other information that is required for retrieving data values from other SAS data sets or from files that are stored in other software vendors' file formats. Short form: data view.

SAS file

a specially structured file that is created, organized, and maintained by SAS. A SAS file can be a SAS data set, a catalog, a stored program, an access descriptor, a utility file, a multidimensional database file, a financial database file, a data mining database file, or an item store file.

SAS library

one or more files that are defined, recognized, and accessible by SAS, and that are referenced and stored as a unit. Each file is a member of the library.

SAS Management Console

a Java application that provides a single user interface for performing SAS administrative tasks.

SAS Metadata Server

a multi-user server that enables users to read metadata from or write metadata to one or more SAS Metadata Repositories.

SAS variable

a column in a SAS data set or in a SAS data view. The data values for each variable describe a single characteristic for all observations (rows).

schema

See SQL schema

server

software that provides either resources or services to requesting clients, possibly over a network.

source

See data source

SQL

See Structured Query Language

SQL catalog

an implementation of the ANSI SQL:1999 standard for a named collection of logically related schemas. The catalog is the first-level (top) grouping mechanism in a data organization hierarchy that qualifies schemas.

SQL schema

an implementation of the ANSI SQL:1999 standard for a data container object that groups logically related objects such as tables and views and other objects that are supported by a data source such as stored procedures. The schema provides a unique namespace that is used along with a catalog to qualify names.

Structured Query Language

a standardized, high-level query language that is used in relational database management systems to create and manipulate objects in a database management system. SAS implements SQL through the SQL procedure. Short form: SQL.

table driver

software that interacts with a data source in order to read from and write to proprietary file formats.

type

See data type

variable

See SAS variable