What's New in SAS/CONNECT 9.0 and 9.1

Overview

New and enhanced features for SAS/CONNECT improve ease of use and SAS performance:

MP CONNECT technology encompasses parallel processing on SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processor) hardware as well as on machines across a network via the asynchronous RSUBMIT statement or command. MP CONNECT now supports pipeline parallelism.
SAS/CONNECT libref inheritance eliminates the need to duplicate data for use in multiple SAS sessions.
The same command that is used to start a client session can also be used to start a server session by assigning the value !sascmd to the SASCMD= option in the SIGNON and RSUBMIT statements and to the SASCMD= global system option.
To ensure information privacy, SAS/CONNECT now supports the network security protocol Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), which encrypts client/server data transfers.
The %SYSLPUT macro statement now enables you to create a macro variable in a specific server session.
A new SASESOCK engine in the LIBNAME statement is available for SAS/CONNECT applications that implement MP CONNECT with piping.
Encoded passwords are supported in the RSUBMIT statement, the SIGNON statement, and in script files that contain passwords.
The SIGNON statement supports these new options: SIGNONWAIT=, TBUFSIZE=, SERVER=, and SERVERV=.
Compute Services (RSUBMIT statement) supports the new options SIGNONWAIT= and CPERSIST=.
New SAS global system options are SIGNONWAIT= and SYSRPUTSYNC=.
SAS/CONNECT server initialization errors are written to the SAS console log.

Note:

This section describes the features of SAS/CONNECT that are new or enhanced since SAS 8.2.
z/OS is the successor to the OS/390 operating system. SAS/CONNECT 9.1 is supported under both OS/390 and z/OS operating systems and, throughout this document, any reference to z/OS also applies to OS/390, unless otherwise stated.

Details

Signon

SAS/CONNECT libref inheritance eliminates the need to duplicate data for use in multiple SAS sessions. Server sessions can inherit client-defined librefs, allowing multiple sessions to read from and write to a single SAS library. Libref inheritance is implemented in the SIGNON and RSUBMIT statements.
The same command that is used to start a client session can also be used to start a server session by assigning the value !sascmd to the SASCMD= option in the SIGNON and RSUBMIT statements and the SASCMD global system option.
The SIGNONWAIT= option in the SIGNON statement and in the RSUBMIT statement specifies whether implicit signons within an RSUBMIT are executed synchronously or asynchronously during a SAS session. Synchronous processing means that an RSUBMIT to a server session must be completed before control is returned to the client session.

SIGNONWAIT= is now also a global SAS system option.
The SAS 9.1 behavior of the filename value that is specified in the LOG= (and OUTPUT=) options in the SIGNON statement is different than in previous releases of SAS. The most recent RSUBMIT to filename overwrites the previous contents of filename. Now, instead of overwriting the file, RSUBMIT appends to the file.
The TBUFSIZE= global system option is now also an option in the SIGNON statement.TBUFSIZE= option in the SIGNON statement specifies the size of the buffer that is used by the SAS application layer for transferring data between a client and a server across a network.
The SERVER= option in the SIGNON statement is used to specify a CONNECT server definition that has been defined in a SAS Metadata Repository.
The SERVERV= option in the SIGNON statement is used to view the values that are configured in the CONNECT server definition.
In order to recover from initialization failures, you need to view the content of the SAS console log. The location of the log varies according to the operating environment that the server session runs under.

Compute Services

MP CONNECT technology encompasses parallel processing on SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processor) hardware as well as on machines across a network via the asynchronous RSUBMIT statement or command.
MP CONNECT now supports pipeline parallelism, which allows multiple SAS DATA steps or procedures to overlap execution by piping the output from one process as the input into the next process in a pipeline. Piping improves performance and reduces the demand for disk space.
SAS/CONNECT libref inheritance eliminates the need to duplicate data for use in multiple SAS sessions. Server sessions can inherit client-defined librefs, allowing multiple sessions to read from and write to a single SAS library. Libref inheritance is implemented in the RSUBMIT and SIGNON statements.
The same command that is used to start a client session can also be used to start a server session by assigning the value !sascmd to the SASCMD= option in the RSUBMIT and SIGNON statements and the SASCMD global system option.
The %SYSLPUT statement is used to create a macro variable in a server session. Now you can identify the specific server session in which a macro should be created, which is necessary because multiple server sessions can result from executing asynchronous remote submits. The /REMOTE= option that is specified in the %SYSLPUT macro statement directs the macro definition to a specific server session.
The SIGNONWAIT= option in the RSUBMIT statement and in the SIGNON statement specifies whether implicit signons within an RSUBMIT are executed synchronously or asynchronously during a SAS session. Synchronous processing means that an RSUBMIT to a server session must be completed before control is returned to the client session.

SIGNONWAIT= is now also a global SAS system option.
The SAS 9.1 behavior of the filename value that is specified in the LOG= (and OUTPUT=) options in the RSUBMIT statement is different than in previous releases of SAS. The most recent RSUBMIT to filename overwrites the previous contents of filename. Now, instead of overwriting the file, RSUBMIT appends to the file.
The CPERSIST option in the RSUBMIT statement is now also a global system option. CPERSIST specifies whether a connection between a client and a server persists (continues) after the RSUBMIT has completed.
The SYSRPUTSYNC option in the RSUBMIT statement is now also a global system option. SYSRPUTSYNC sets %SYSRPUT macro variables in the client session when the %SYSRPUT statements are executed rather than when a synchronization point is encountered.

Remote Library Services

An explicit port number may now be specified in the SERVER= option in the LIBNAME statement if you use the TCP/IP access method and sign on to a spawner by using an explicit port specification instead of using the default port.
SAS®9 Remote Library Services does not permit a SAS®9 client or server to connect to a SAS 6 client or server. Use PROC UPLOAD and PROC DOWNLOAD to connect clients and servers that run SAS®9 and SAS 6. For details, see information about cross-version issues in the SAS/SHARE User's Guide.
The LIBNAME statement for the SASESOCK engine associates a libref with a TCP/IP pipe (instead of a physical disk device) for processing input and output. The SASESOCK engine is required for SAS/CONNECT applications that implement MP CONNECT with piping.

Data Transfer Services

Improvements to the file-compression algorithm have significantly reduced the time required for large data transfers using SAS/CONNECT.

Security

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a protocol that provides network security and privacy for SAS/CONNECT client/server transfers. To use SSL, you must first install and configure SSL. To apply SSL, you must set SAS system options.

SSL is supported only under the UNIX and Windows operating environments.
Encoded passwords are supported in the RSUBMIT statement , the SIGNON statement , and in script files that contain passwords.

Resources