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What's New Table of Contents  

What's New for the SAS 9.0 and 9.1 Data Providers

Overview

New or enhanced features in the SAS Data Providers include the following:

Note: This section describes the features of the SAS Data Providers that are new or enhanced since SAS 8.2.

Details

Version 6 of the SAS/SHARE Server is No Longer Supported

Version 6 of the SAS/SHARE Server is no longer supported by the SAS/SHARE Data Provider. You can still connect to Version 7 or later SAS/SHARE servers.

SAS OLAP Data Provider

The new SAS OLAP Data Provider supports access to multidimensional data on a SAS OLAP Server through the OLE DB for OLAP interfaces.

Data Source Syntax for Easier Integration

In addition to setting each property individually, the SAS IOM and SAS OLAP Data Providers now enable you to specify all the necessary properties in the Data Source.

File Support across Operating Environments

The SAS Local Data Provider supports SAS data sets that were created under operating environments other than Windows. Data sets created for operating environments such as Solaris and HP-UX can be read directly by the SAS Local Data Provider.

In-Memory Data Set Caching

The SAS IOM Data Provider now supports in-memory data caching by means of the new rowset property DBPROP_SAS_PAGESIZE, which controls how many rows the IOM server retrieves each time it processes a request. Retrieved rows are held in memory and are returned to the OLE DB consumer as needed. In-memory caching can significantly improve performance.

ADO recordsets also have a caching facility for improving performance. You can set the "CacheSize" property on the Recordset object to the number of rows that you want to retrieve on each request. To ensure the best performance, you set the "Maximum Open Rows" (DBPROP_MAXOPENROWS) property to a value that is at least twice the value of the "CacheSize" property.

Optimized accessors are supported as described by the OLE DB specification, and they can be used for application-specific performance tuning.

Positioning

For the SAS IOM Data Provider, positioning improvements are available only when caching is enabled. If you have legacy applications that are dependent on the positioning model used in SAS Data Provider releases prior to SAS 9.0, you can disable caching and return to the previous model.

Larger Tables and Longer Names for Formats and Informats

The SAS Data Providers now support all rows and columns that are supported in SAS. For OLE DB consumers, two interfaces have been added to SASExtensions.h:

(ADO consumers do not have access to these interfaces.)

Because longer names for formats and informats are supported, all SAS Data Providers can use SAS formats when reading data. The SAS IOM Data Provider can write data using SAS informats and apply user-written formats and informats.

Version-Dependent and Version-Independent ProgIDs

All SAS Data Providers support both version-dependent and version-independent ProgIDs. This enables you to install different versions of the SAS Data Providers on the same operating environment and to write applications that use specific versions of the SAS Data Providers.

Error Reporting

If you encounter a problem while using the SAS Data Providers, improved error messages give you more detailed information to help you diagnose and resolve problems more quickly.

Length-Setting Column Attributes and Additional ADO Column Types

The fixed-length column attribute is now set correctly by the SAS Data Providers. This attribute affects the type of column that ADO reports. Also, the range of column types has been expanded to include adVarChar and adVarWChar when the fixed-length column attribute is not set.

Full Path Table IDs

When you open a recordset using ADO or open a rowset using OLE DB, the SAS Local Data Provider supports the use of a full path, such as c:\sasuser\data.sas7bdat, as the table ID. To use this form of table ID, you must set the value of the "Data Source" property on the ADO Connection object and the OLE DB DBPROP_INIT_DATASOURCE property to "_LOCAL_" (the default).

Local Update Access by the SAS/SHARE Data Provider

Single-user update access to a local installation of SAS is now provided by the SAS/SHARE Data Provider and users can perform SQL processing on local data sets. The SAS Local Data Provider no longer supports update access.