SAS: Exploiting the Power of Windows

An Integral Part of Your Windows Editions

Read and Write SAS Data Sets from Previous Releases

Use the Graphical Interface or the Command Line Interface

SAS Runs in Enterprise Environments

The Windows enterprise environment provides a flexible, easy-to-use working environment by which you can integrate SAS into your enterprise solutions. The following Windows environments are supported in SAS 9.3:

Supported Windows Editions for SAS 9.3

Chip Architecture	Operating System	Edition
x86, x86-64 (x64)	Windows XP Windows Server 2003 Windows Vista Windows Vista Windows Vista Windows 7 Windows Server 2008	Professional Standard Edition Business Enterprise Ultimate Professional, Ultimate Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter
x86-64 (x64)	Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2008 R2	Enterprise Edition DataCenter Server Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter

Note: All other versions of Windows are not supported.

An Integral Part of Your Windows Editions

SAS under Windows is designed to let you complete your data- and computation-intensive tasks while integrating with the Windows applications that are already in place on your desktop and within your enterprise. SAS supports information sharing through the most powerful tools and techniques that Windows has to offer.Those tools and techniques include the following:

OLE
Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)
Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)
e-mail system
Lotus Notes
pipes and named pipes
the Windows clipboard.

Compatible and Maintainable

Read and Write SAS Data Sets from Previous Releases

SAS can read and write SAS data sets that were created by earlier releases of SAS.

However, in order to bridge the upgrades in the SAS catalog architecture and differences in the operating environment structure, you must convert catalogs from earlier formats (such as Release 9.1 under Windows) to SAS 9.3 format using the transport procedures CPORT and CIMPORT.

Use the Graphical Interface or the Command Line Interface

You can still use the command line as you did in previous releases. However, you can also use the graphical user interface (GUI) to issue commands. Most existing SAS commands and windows are available through the GUI. In some cases, you select operations through dialog boxes and various other GUI controls.

Launching Java

SAS launches Java using the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) so that it can run Java code. Parts of SAS are written in Java. The JRE contains the libraries that are needed to run Java.

In SAS 9.3, the SAS/ STAT and SAS/GRAPH procedures that rely on Java are delivered as part of Base SAS, rather than as a separate SAS product. As a result, a key difference in the SAS 9.3 windowing environment is that SAS now initializes the Java environment upon SAS invocation.

HTML is now the default output for SAS 9.3 Windowing environment, replacing the listing destination. The default style has changed from Styles.Default to Styles.HTMLBlue for the default HTML that is generated with the SAS windowing environment.

Java is implemented as a part of Base SAS in SAS 9.3 because the Graph Template Language and all the SAS/GRAPH procedures such as SGPLOT, SGPANNEL, SGSCATTER, and SGRENDER are moving to Base SAS from the SAS/GRAPH procedures. Also, ODS GRAPHICS will be turned on by default and will render graphics for most procedures that can render statistical graphics for only SAS windowing environment. For ODS graphics, you must use the ODS GRAPHICS statement to control the graphical environment. You do not have to specify the ODS GRAPHICS ON statement to turn on ODS graphics. For more information, see Troubleshooting Java Runtime Environment Errors.