| What's New |
| Additional Information |
For more information about new features, see the What's New information for Base SAS in these documents:
The What's New topic in the individual documents provides links to the documentation for the new features.
| Supported Operating Environments |
SAS 9.2 supports new operating systems and hardware that includes Microsoft Windows x64 editions, Linux on x86-64-based CPUs and Solaris 10x64. Also new for SAS 9.2 is support for OpenVMS on HP Integrity (Itanium) servers. OpenVMS on Integrity servers supports a product set that is similar to what is offered on OpenVMS Alpha systems. SAS 9.2 continues to support key platforms for SAS, including Microsoft Windows 2003/2008 (32-bit) server families, z/OS, Solaris on SPARC, AIX on Power, HP-UX on Itanium and PA-RISC, and Linux 32-bit distributions.
For a list of all operating environments that are supported by SAS 9.2, see http://support.sas.com/resources/sysreq/hosts/index.html.
| Migration |
The MIGRATE procedure now supports more cross-environment migrations to SAS 9.2.
| ODS and Output Formatting |
ODS (Output Delivery System) packages enable ODS destinations to use the SAS Publishing Framework, which is a feature of SAS Integration Technologies. An ODS package tracks the output from any active destinations that connect with it. After the destinations close, the package can be published to any of the publish destinations.
Measured RTF output enables you to specify how and where page breaks occur and when to place titles and footnotes in the body of a page.
Inline formatting has new syntax and can now be nested. With inline formatting you can change border styles individually.
Style element inheritance has been enhanced in SAS 9.2. In addition, the functionality of the REPLACE statement has been completely incorporated into the STYLE statement.
The TEMPLATE procedure now enables you to customize the appearance of crosstabulation (contingency) tables that are created with the FREQ procedure.
You can now define styles by using TEMPLATE procedure syntax as well as cascading style sheets (CSS).
You can use table header and footer style elements in the TEMPLATE procedure to change the borders of the regions that surround the table header and footer.
The PRINT procedure now enables the insertion of blank lines and the BY variable label on the summary line, as well as the formatting of large numbers.
| Universal Printing |
Universal Printing now supports the following printers:
All Universal Printers now render TrueType fonts for output in all operating environments, including 40 new TrueType fonts.
Several new system options enable you to control the use, layout, viewing, security, description, metatadata, and printing options of PDF documents.
| SAS Logging Facility |
The SAS logging facility logs SAS server and SAS program messages based on message categories such as authentication, administration, and performance. The logging facility has six message levels: trace, debug, warn, info, error, and fatal. The contents of the log message can be customized, and for SAS servers, you can view the log messages in SAS Management Console. In SAS programs, you can create customized message categories and log messages either in the same destinations as SAS server logs, or you can log messages in a file that you specify. The SAS logging facility enhances SAS logging and does not replace the traditional SAS log.
| National Language Support |
SAS 9.2 adds support for several more locales and encodings, as well as international currency informats and formats, and alternate collating sequences such as linguistic collation.
| SAS Information Maps |
The INFOMAPS procedure has been updated so you can make more modifications to information maps programmatically. You can add new data sources, data items, filters, folders, or relationships. Or, you can change the definitions of any existing data item, filter, data source, folder or relationship within an information map.
For the SAS Information Maps LIBNAME engine, you can now specify whether detail data or aggregated data is used by the engine. You can also specify an authentication domain.
| SAS Remote Browsing |
In all operating environments except Windows 32-bit environments, the SAS Remote Browser replaces the SAS Help Browser. You now view ODS HTML, PDF, and RTF output, SAS documentation, and other Web pages that are specified by the WBROWSE command by using the Web browser on your computer.
| User-Written Functions |
You can now write your own functions in either C, C++, or the SAS language, and use them in a SAS program. External functions that are written in C or C++ can be used in SAS programs after they have been registered using the PROTO procedure. To write your own functions in the SAS language, use the FCMP procedure. The new FUNCTIONS DICTIONARY table contains information about all functions that can be used in SAS.
| IPv6 |
To support the "next generation" of Internet protocol, SAS supports the new IPv6 Internet protocol as well as the current IPv4 protocol.
| Web Services |
The HTTP procedure invokes a Web service that uses the HTTP protocol.
The SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) procedure enables a Web messaging protocol that invokes a Web service by using the Java Native Interface (JNI) and the Axis2 Java Client.
The WebDAV access method is now available in the z/OS operating environment. New WebDAV options enable you to access directory files and automatically append a file extension to a filename.
User IDs and passwords can be authenticated for WebDAV server access.
| Performance |
SAS programs that run in batch mode and terminate before they complete can be resumed at the DATA or PROC step that follows the last completed DATA or PROC step. To do this, you can specify that your SAS program runs in checkpoint mode and restart mode.
The SQL procedure has been optimized to improve the performance of queries to external databases and SAS libraries.
The SORT procedure determines whether a data set has already been sorted before it attempts to sort a data set.
The IBUFNO system option enables you to specify an optional number of extra buffers to be allocated for navigating an index file.
You can specify when SAS files are written to disk by using the new FILESYNC system option.
The DATASETS procedure now enables you to continue processing if indexes and integrity constraints are disabled.
| Security |
SAS now supports the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) data encryption algorithm. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Secure Shell (SSH) are now supported in the z/OS operating environment.
The Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) access method provides a secure connection and file transfers between two hosts (client and server) over a network, where both commands and data are encrypted.
The PWENCODE procedure now supports the sas003 encoding method, which uses a 256-bit key encryption method to generate encoded passwords.
You can now specify in the LIBNAME statement whether user ID and password credentials are necessary when accessing a WebDAV server.
| Diagnostics |
The SCAPROC procedure is a SAS Code Analyzer that captures information in a file about the input, output, variables, and macros for a SAS job while the job is running.
The JAVAINFO procedure reports diagnostic information about the Java environment that SAS is using.
Using the DATA statement, notes to the SAS log can be written at the beginning and end of each level of nested DO statements.
| Procedures |
In the second maintenance release after SAS 9.2, the FREQ, MEANS, RANK, and SUMMARY procedures have been enhanced to run inside the Teradata Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW).
You can transport SAS data sets between hosts by using the DATASETS procedure COPY statement with either the XPORT engine or the REMOTE engine.
The REPORT procedure has new features:
The TABULATE procedure enables you to specify variable name list shortcuts within the TABLE statement and now supports style attributes.
The SQL procedure has new features:
Output from the OPTIONS procedure can now expand the value of an environment variable and display a list of system option groups.
The FREQ procedure and the UNIVARIATE procedure create plots and graphs by using ODS styles.
SAS now supports data models for the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC). The CDISC procedure supports validating a SAS data set against the Study Data Tabulation Model (SDTM) standards. In addition, several enhancements are implemented for importing and exporting a CDISC Operational Data Model (ODM) XML document.
| Language Elements |
You can now access remote files by using Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP).
Data sets can be repaired automatically without the indexes and integrity constraints.
The DATA step component Java object enables instantiation of Java classes and accesses fields and methods on the resultant objects.
Data set options can now be used with the DATA step component objects.
The new SYSECHO statement enables IOM clients to manually track the progress of a segment of a submitted SAS program.
Files that are located in an aggregate storage location whose filename does not comply with SAS naming conventions can now be accessed through the %INCLUDE, FILE, and the INFILE statements. A new DATA statement option enables notes to be written to the SAS log at the beginning and end of each level of nested DO statements.
Several new informats and formats read and write date, time, and datetime data that is formatted according to ISO 8601.
New character functions return information about character position or words in a character string. Other new functions return date and time interval and various mathematical computations. Several functions from other SAS products that return date or time information are now part of Base SAS.
New automatic macro variables contain information about the SAS session encoding, local and remote computer names, and SAS log error and warning messages.
Many new system options support the new SAS 9.2 features. Others support e-mail, SAS/GRAPH features, macro enhancements, and a default logical record length.
Copyright © 2009 by SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.