The LASR procedure is used to start, stop, and load and unload tables from a distributed SAS LASR Analytic Server. The LASR procedure can also be used to save in-memory tables to HDFS.

The LASR procedure can transfer data from any data source that SAS can read and load it into memory on the SAS LASR Analytic Server. However, the LASR procedure can also be used to make the server read data from a co-located data provider. The HDFS that is part of SAS High-Performance Deployment of Hadoop provides a co-located data provider. Some third-party vendor databases can also act as co-located data providers. Two examples of third-party vendor databases are the Greenplum Data Computing Appliance (DCA) and Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance. When the data is co-located, each machine that is used by the server instance reads the portion of the data that is local. Because the read is local and because the machines read in parallel, very large tables are read quickly.

In order to use a third-party vendor database as a co-located data provider, the client machine must be configured with the native database client software and the SAS/ACCESS Interface software for the database. The database is identified in a LIBNAME statement. The LASR procedure then uses the SERVER= information from the LIBNAME statement and the host name information in the PERFORMANCE statement to determine whether the data is co-located. If the host information is the same, then the data is read in parallel.