What's New in the SAS 9.3 XML LIBNAME Engine

Overview

In SAS 9.3, the engine nickname to access the enhanced XML LIBNAME engine functionality is XMLV2. The previous nickname—XML92—is supported as an alias.

In SAS 9.3, XMLV2 functionality is production, except in the z/OS environment, where it is preproduction.

In the second maintenance release for SAS 9.3, the LIBNAME statement for XMLV2 supports automatically generating an XMLMap file.

The XMLMap syntax for version 2.1 supports XML namespaces.

Enhanced LIBNAME Statement

The LIBNAME statement for the XMLV2 nickname no longer supports the WSDL markup type for the XMLTYPE= option. In the second maintenance release for SAS 9.3, the LIBNAME statement for the XML nickname no longer supports the EXPORT markup type for the XMLTYPE= option.

In the second maintenance release for SAS 9.3, the LIBNAME statement for XMLV2 supports the AUTOMAP= option to automatically generate an XMLMap file to import an XML document. For more information, see the AUTOMAP= option.

Updated XMLMap Functionality

XMLMap syntax is updated to version 2.1 with the following enhancements:

XMLV2 supports XML namespaces in an XMLMap. XML namespaces distinguish element and attribute names by qualifying them with Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) references. See Elements for Namespaces.
If an XML namespace is defined in the XMLMap, all elements that specify a location path support the XML namespace definition. Specify the type of syntax as XPathENR, include the identification number for the XML namespace in the location path preceding the appropriate element, and enclose the identification number in braces. See PATH syntax="type".
For the COLUMN element, the ordinal= attribute, which determines whether the variable is a counter variable, is no longer supported. The functionality is provided with the class="ORDINAL" attribute. For details, see the COLUMN element.