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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.

Migration

Long names for variables: are not supported in Version 6.

Best practice
Set OPTIONS VALIDVARNAME=V6 to get an error message.
Encoding attribute: is not supported in Version 6. Version 7 and 8 data sets must be updated or output in a SAS 9 session to be stamped with an encoding attribute. (The encoding attribute was supported prior to SAS 9 in China, Korea, and Japan.)

The encoding attribute enables you to, for example, more easily process multilingual data in a single SAS session with the UTF8 session encoding. See the topic about National Language Support (NLS).
Long names for formats and informats: are not supported in Version 6, 7, or 8.
Best practice
Set OPTIONS VALIDVARNAME=V6 to get an error message. If you specify the V7 or V8 engine, such as in a LIBNAME statement, SAS automatically uses the VALIDVARNAME=V6 behavior. Under Version 6, use of long format names automatically causes a failure as well.
Greater than 32,767 variables: is not supported prior to SAS 9.1.
Suppressed transcoding of a specified variable: is not supported prior to SAS 9.1.
CHECK integrity constraints created in SAS 9.2: are not compatible with earlier releases of SAS. If you add the constraint to an existing SAS data set or create a SAS data set that includes the constraint, the data set cannot be accessed by any release prior to SAS 9.2.