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What's New Table of Contents

What's New in the SAS 9.0, 9.1, and 9.1.3 Companion for z/OS

Overview

New features in SAS 9.0 (and later) under z/OS include support for the following items:

• long format names
• remote help
• record-level sharing (RLS) for VSAM data sets and extended-format VSAM data sets.

Note:   

• This section describes the features of SAS software under z/OS that are new or enhanced since SAS 8.2.
• z/OS is the successor to the OS/390 operating system. SAS 9.1 (and later) for z/OS is supported on 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.
• For important information about new developments for SAS 9.1 (and later) for z/OS, see support.sas.com.

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Details

Long Format Names

Beginning with version 9.0, SAS supports long format names up to a maximum length of 32 bytes. Because earlier versions of SAS support format names that are only a maximum length of 8 bytes, you will not be able to use earlier versions of SAS to read SAS 9.0 (and later) data sets that contain long format names.

Remote Help

The remote help system enables users who access SAS by using a z/OS emulator (or a real 3270) to view SAS documentation with a Web browser on a PC that is running Microsoft Windows. Previously, all documentation was displayed by the itemstore help in the SAS Help window in the z/OS emulator. By displaying this documentation in your Windows Web browser, the browsing capability is improved and the documentation content is more complete.

SAS Language Elements

• The following SAS statements have been enhanced:
  • The NRLS option in the INFILE statement instructs SAS not to attempt to open a VSAM data set in record-level sharing (RLS) mode, even if the data set is defined as RLS eligible.
  • The libref argument in the LIBNAME statement now supports library names that contain underscores (_).
• The following SAS system options are new:
  • The DLEXCPCOUNT option reports EXCPs (Execute Channel Program calls) to direct access bound libraries.
  • The DLMSGLEVEL option specifies which level of messages to generate for SAS data libraries.
  • The FILESPACE option at initialization specifies how the FILENAME and LIBNAME statements should provide default values when allocating a new z/OS data set.
• The new SAS function DSNCATLGD verifies the existence of a file in the z/OS system catalog.