When to Use a Viewer

You want to publish a package that contains a data set, for delivery to consumers who use a view-only transport (such as e-mail). Because a SAS data set is not viewable in e-mail, an HTML or text viewer is needed to format the SAS data for a view-only presentation.

If you are publishing to a channel, the transports that are used by subscribers are unknown to you. Therefore, you might decide to format the entire package with the aid of a viewer to ensure maximum viewability for the broadest consumer audience. The viewer is applied to a package that is published to subscribers who use e-mail delivery, WebDAV subscribers, or channels that have a WebDAV persistent store. The viewer is not applied to a package that is published to subscribers who specify delivery to message queues.

With a viewer, you can extract specific package items and variables from a SAS data set entry and distribute to subscribers who use e-mail. Subscribers who use e-mail receive the package entries that the viewer extracts and formats. Subscribers who use queues receive the full package.

Besides formatting a SAS data set package entry, you can also use a viewer to format other entries in the package (such as another HTML file, a text file, a binary file, or a reference) as input streams. Applying a viewer to the entire package provides a comprehensive presentation for viewing purposes only.

A popular form of package output is an electronic newsletter. The basic template that imposes the look and feel of the document can contain static text or HTML coding. However, you can code the dynamic information (in the form of news articles or SAS data) as links to Web sites whose source data is continuously refreshed.

Delivery of SAS result sets and other text and graphical information via e-mail has the greatest value for an executive level consumer. The executive might have a requirement to view the data (for example, in the form of summary tables) and to read text but might not necessarily need access to the raw data for continued processing, extraction, and delivery throughout the enterprise.