SAS/C Software Overview

SAS/C Connectivity Support Library

The SAS/C Connectivity Support Library (CSL) is an add-on product that facilitates network communications between SAS/C programs and other applications. CSL is actually a set of libraries and related utilities that support the use of several popular application protocols for distributed (client/server) computing. CSL operates in a heterogeneous computing environment using TCP/IP, and it is designed to ease the development of mainframe programs that interact with a wide range of other computer systems, including PCs, workstations, large servers, and supercomputers.

The SAS/C CSL libraries provide the programming support for the three most popular application protocols in a TCP/IP network environment:

X Window System
Sun Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
Sun Network File System (NFS) protocols.

CSL also provides a rexec client function, some Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agent customization functions, and a few supporting POSIX functions.

SAS/C CSL has several important advantages:

It is designed to work with SAS/C. Thus, a large body of existing applications can be enhanced to use these protocols. Standard SAS/C techniques are used for compiling, linking, and running CSL programs.
UNIX compatibility is high. The SAS/C CSL design has placed a high priority on running existing UNIX programs with few or no changes. This design goal also maximizes portability among implementations of other operating systems such as DOS and OpenVMS.
Because SAS/C CSL uses the SAS/C socket library for TCP/IP, programs that are written with the SAS/C CSL will run on a TCP/IP implementation that works with the SAS/C socket library. (The TCP/IP products developed by IBM, Fibronics, and Interlink are examples of such implementations.) Therefore, software developers can build applications without regard for the TCP/IP vendor in use at a customer site.
As with the base SAS/C product, the run-time components of SAS/C CSL are freely redistributable. This means that applications written with CSL can be run at other sites without requiring those sites to license SAS/C or CSL.

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