What Is a Package?

A package is a container for information, or digital content, that is generated or collected for delivery to a consumer.

Knowledge takes the form of package entries, which can be either of two types:

• SAS results

• unstructured content

A category of package entry type is SAS results, which can take the form of any of the following:

• SAS catalog

• SAS data set

• SAS database (such as FDB and MDDB)

• SAS SQL view

Unstructured content is any package entry that is created external to SAS. Supported unstructured content types include the following:

• binary file (such as Excel, GIF, JPG, PDF, PowerPoint, and Word)

• HTML file (including ODS output)

• reference string (such as URL)

• text file (such as a SAS program)

• viewer file (such as an HTML or plain text template that formats SAS file items for viewing in e-mail)

Each entry in a package is implicitly contained in a file whose filename extension reflects the entry type. Knowing filename extensions might be useful when retrieving packages from the archive and WebDAV transports.

Default filename extensions are as follows:

.csv - Comma-separated values
.ref - Reference
.sac - SAS Catalog
.sad - SAS data set
.sam - SAS MDDB
.sav - SAS SQL View
.spk - Nested package

Copyright © 2008 by SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.