Although this book does not require previous knowledge of the SAS/IML language, experienced SAS/IML programmers might wonder how to transfer data between matrices and a DataObject. For completeness, this issue is addressed in this section.

The SAS/IML language provides statements to read and write server data to and from matrices. The USE statement opens a SAS data set, and the READ statement reads server data into matrices. The SAS/IML language also has a CREATE statement that creates a server data set and an APPEND statement that writes variables from matrices. These statements are documented fully in the SAS/IML User's Guide.