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About Format and Informat Processing with OLE DB

OLE DB applications use customizations to the OLE DB interfaces in order to access SAS formatting features. See the following topics for help on using the customizations in your application:

• Using the SASFORMAT Structure
• Applying Default Formats to Input Operations
• Overriding Formats for Input Operations
• Applying Informats to Output Operations

For a list of supported formats, see Supported Formats. For information about how to determine if a SAS data set has persisted formatting information, see Determining Persisted Formatting Information.

Note: ADO applications support SAS formatting features through the use of the "SAS Formats" and "SAS Informats" properties. For more information, see Using Formats When You Read Data and Using Informats When You Write Data.

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Supported Formats

The SAS IOM Data Provider supports both user-written formats and and SAS formats that are defined within the context of the currently active IOM workspace.

The SAS Local Data Provider, SAS OLAP Data Provider, and SAS/SHARE Data Provider do not support user-written formats; however, they do support most SAS formats. For the SAS OLAP Data Provider, the formats must be persisted with the cube on the OLAP server. Following is the list of supported SAS formats:

$ASCII $BINARY $CHAR $EBCDIC $HEX $OCTAL $QUOTE $REVERJ $REVERS $UPCASE $XPORTCH BEST BINARY COMMA COMMAX D DATEAMPM DATETIME DATE DAY DDMMYY DOLLAR DOLLARX DOWNAME DTDATE DTMONYY DTYEAR DTYYQC E

FLOAT FRACT HEX HHMM HOUR IB IEEE JULIAN MINGUO MMDDYY MMSS MMYY MONNAME MONTH MONYY NEGPAREN NENGO NUMX OCTAL PD PERCENT

PIB PIBR PK PVALUE QTR QTRR RB ROMAN SSN S370FF S370FIB S370FIBU S370FPD S370FPDU S370FPIB S370FRB S370FZD S370FZDL S370FZDS S370FZDT S370FZDU TIME TIMEAMPM TOD WEEKDATE WEEKDATX WEEKDAY WORDDATE WORDDATX WORDF

WORDS XYYMMDD YEAR YEN YYMM YYMMDD YYMMN YYMON YYQ YYQR Z ZD

See the SAS 9.1 Language Reference: Dictionary for more information about any of these individual formats.

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Determining Persisted Formatting Information

In a SAS data set, a variable (column) can have persisted formatting information. There are two methods that you can use to determine what, if any, persisted format information exists in a data set. You should use the method that is most appropriate for your application.

• Along with some other column metadata that is specific to SAS, the ISASColumnsInfo customized rowset interface returns the names, lengths, and decimal widths of formats and informats that are stored in the data set. The data set must be open in order to use the interface. For more information about how to use the interface, refer to its specification.
• Note: A format or informat name that is returned by ISASColumnsInfo::GetColumnsInfo may not be supported by a particular provider or server. By default, you will receive an error if you attempt to apply format or informat services with a format that is not supported. To change this default behavior, set the DBPROP_SAS_FMTERR property to VARIANT_FALSE.

• The COLUMNS schema rowset also returns format and informat metadata. Consider using this method if your application needs to determine metadata for columns that exist in a table that is not open.