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Compatibility

Migration

SAS File Features Not Supported in Previous Releases

This topic is important only if you need compatibility between different versions of SAS, such as the following situations:

• You move existing files to the target installation and don't migrate them to the current SAS file format.
• You process a SAS file under a previous version of SAS (for example, you exchange data with a SAS user who has not upgraded).

New File Features Not Supported for SAS 9.2

• extended naming for data sets, views, and item stores

New File Features Not Supported for SAS 9.1.3

• extended naming for data sets, views, and item stores
• CHECK integrity constraints created
• sas003 encoding method
• linguistic collation with the SORT procedure

New File Features Not Supported for SAS 8

• extended naming for data sets, views, and item stores
• CHECK integrity constraints created
• sas003 encoding method
• linguistic collation with the SORT procedure
• greater than 32,767 variables
• suppressed transcoding of a specified variable
• long names for formats and informats

New File Features Not Supported for SAS 6

• extended naming for data sets, views, and item stores
• CHECK integrity constraints created
• sas003 encoding method
• linguistic collation with the SORT procedure
• greater than 32,767 variables
• suppressed transcoding of a specified variable
• long names for formats and informats
• encoding attribute
• long names for variables

Additional Considerations

• See the SAS software features that are not compatible across releases.
• See What's New for new software features that are not functional in previous releases. For example, SAS continually releases new formats and informats, which are not supported in previous releases. Another example is catalog entries, whose behavior can change in a new release. These are two examples of new features that, if applied in the current release, can make a data set unreadable in a previous release.
• In 64-bit SAS, you can create a data set with greater than 2³¹-1 (about 2 billion) observations. A data set with more than 2 billion observations is unusable by the BASE engine in 32-bit SAS.
• For supported processing, see Using a SAS®9 File in a Previous Release.
• If you must run different versions of SAS on the same computer, see the peaceful coexistence topic.