• support.sas.com
• KNOWLEDGE BASE
• SUPPORT
• LEARNING CENTER
• COMMUNITY
•  

Hot Topics

• Updates for SAS 9.2 (March 2008)
  See the compatibility calculator to determine whether you need to migrate your libraries to SAS 9.2. Use the PROC MIGRATE calculator to find the right example code for your migration.
  
  
• Get a Smarter COMPARE
  Validation tools for the MIGRATE procedure now work with CEDA and provide additional details about catalogs, indexes, and integrity constraints.
  
  
• Start Planning
  See Getting Started for the most efficient pathway through all of the SAS®9 migration documentation.
  
  
• Coexistence
  Many SAS®9 products can install side-by-side with SAS 8.2 with very good compatibility. See Peaceful Coexistence: SAS®9 and SAS 8.2 for details.
  
  
• Sample Validation SOP
  See an example SOP: SAS Installation Qualification / Operational Qualification (PDF) (updated 19 May 2008) for the pharmaceutical industry.

Related Links

• SAS Notes
• Glossary
• Install Center
• Section 508 Accessibility
• Expanded Table of Contents
• Contact Us

Product-Specific Compatibility

Migration

SAS/ACCESS Software

This page summarizes compatibility issues for the SAS/ACCESS 9 interfaces. See also the SAS online documentation for What's New in SAS System 9.

• For the supported SAS 9 processing when you do not migrate ACCESS views to Version 9 format, see the main compatibility topic.
  
  
• To learn which DBMS versions are supported under your operating environment, see Technical Support's SAS/ACCESS Validation application. The following are not supported in SAS 9:
  • Databases CA-OpenIngres and Oracle Rdb
  • Operating environments CMS, OS/2, IAB, MAB, 32-bit UNIX (HPUX, SLX, AIX), Windows 95, and Windows 98.
  Some SAS/ACCESS products are temporarily not supported in SAS 9 because of vendor availability or other issues.
  
  
• While SAS now supports longer names, SAS/ACCESS procedures (except SAS/ACCESS to IMS) do not support column names longer than 8 characters, SAS format and informat names longer than 8 characters, label names longer than 200 characters, or SAS character variable data of more than 200 characters. SAS/ACCESS procedures include ACCESS, DBLOAD, DB2UTIL, DB2EXT, and DB2LOAD.
  
  
• While SAS 9.1 supports "wider" data sets (more than 32,000 columns), SAS/ACCESS does not support more than 255 columns.
  
  
• On a 64-bit SAS 9 environment, a SAS/ACCESS access descriptor or view descriptor that was created on a 32-bit environment must be converted to a Version 9 access or view descriptor before it can be read or updated. (Only Tru64 UNIX was 64-bit in Version 6, and many environments were available in 64-bit versions in Release 8.2.) This conversion can be done with the MIGRATE procedure or the CV2VIEW procedure, which also converts a SAS/ACCESS view to a PROC SQL view, in which case the libref assignment is internal to the PROC SQL view. See the PROC MIGRATE and SAS/ACCESS documentation for details.
  
  
• Specifying the SCHEMA= parameter on the CONNECT statement in PROC SQL Pass-Through produces an error; see SAS Note 016359.

Peaceful Coexistence of SAS 8.2 and SAS 9

SAS/ACCESS 8.2 and SAS/ACCESS 9 software can coexist on one machine. However, if you update the environment to support SAS/ACCESS 9 calls, that might conflict with 8.2 calls. An example of such an update is environment variables. You can solve the problem by writing scripts that set the appropriate environment variables before SAS/ACCESS software runs.