Viewer Processing

SAS Integration Technologies provides a viewer facility that combines the robust text rendering capabilities of HTML and plain text with the efficiency of e-mail delivery. This facility enables you to create and apply a viewer, which is a template that contains formatting directives for rendering a specific view to an entire package or to selected package entries.

The viewer facility consists of a set of tagging extensions to HTML, which you can use to create a unique template according to the specific package data that is being rendered. For example, you can write formatting directives to stream package entries (such as a text file or a URL reference) or to extract SAS data file entries for presentation in e-mail. A viewer creates a presentation quality look and feel to package data entries for distribution to a view-only audience.

A primary benefit of applying viewers to packages is that e-mail recipients can now view package entries that otherwise would not be viewable. For example, an archive that contains a SAS data set can be attached to e-mail, but is not viewable in e-mail unless a viewer is applied. The viewer renders the SAS data set as a populated table.

Furthermore, a viewer facilitates publishing in the traditional sense using, for example, an electronic newsletter. An electronic newsletter template that is coded in HTML or plain text format can dynamically build your content, which can consist of links to Web sites for up-to-date information about topics of interest to its readers.