What's New Table of Contents |
What's New in Moving and Accessing SAS 9.0 and 9.1 Files
Overview
The following strategies in Base SAS are available for moving and accessing SAS files between operating environments that run different releases of SAS:
- Cross-Environment Data Access (CEDA)
- CPORT and CIMPORT procedures
- XPORT engine with the DATA step or the COPY procedure
- XML engine with the DATA step or the COPY procedure.
Note: This section describes the features that are new
to the topic of moving SAS files since SAS 8.2. Using SAS CONNECT and SAS/SHARE
to move or access SAS files are discussed in the
SAS/CONNECT User's Guide and the
SAS/SHARE User's Guide. 
Details
Cross-Environment Data Access (CEDA)
CEDA is a simple strategy for file access across a network. CEDA enables you to read a network-mounted SAS file from any directory-based operating environment that runs SAS 8 or later, regardless of the file format of the SAS file being accessed.
CEDA dynamically converts between the native formats of the source and target operating environments that run under different architectures (for example, UNIX and Windows). CEDA eliminates having to convert a file to transport format.
CPORT and CIMPORT Procedures
In most cases, in order to move a SAS file between operating environments, you can use the CPORT and CIMPORT procedures and FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to create a transport file at the source machine, transfer that file across the network, and restore the transport file to native format at the target machine.
- CAUTION:
- Moving or accessing SAS files is not
the same as migrating SAS files.
Migration of SAS files (data and applications) is not discussed in this documentation. For details about migrating SAS files, see the Migration Community at support.sas.com/rnd/migration.
XPORT Engine with the DATA Step or the COPY Procedure
The XPORT engine creates files in transport format that can be transferred across operating environments, and directed to multiple target operating environments that run different releases of SAS. Transport files that are created by the XPORT engine can be transferred across operating environments and read using the XPORT engine with the DATA step or PROC COPY.
XML Engine with the DATA Step or the COPY Procedure
The XML engine imports and exports XML documents. The XML format provides increased cross-architectural compatibility by storing numeric values as character data and by identifying the character encoding in a file header. XML files can be transferred across operating environments and read using the XML engine with the DATA step or with PROC COPY.
The XML engine was introduced in SAS 8.2 and is completely documented in the SAS 9.1 XML LIBNAME Engine User's Guide. Using the XML engine as a strategy for moving SAS files across operating environments is introduced in this documentation for SAS 9.1.