Overview of SAS/ACCESS Interface to Relational Databases

Methods for Accessing Relational Database Data

SAS/ACCESS Interface to Relational Databases is a family of interfaces--each licensed separately--with which you can interact with data in other vendor databases from within SAS. SAS/ACCESS provides these methods for accessing relational DBMS data.

You can use the LIBNAME statement to assign SAS librefs to DBMS objects such as schemas and databases. After you associate a database with a libref, you can use a SAS two-level name to specify any table or view in the database. You can then work with the table or view as you would with a SAS data set.
You can use the SQL pass-through facility to interact with a data source using its native SQL syntax without leaving your SAS session. SQL statements are passed directly to the data source for processing.
You can use ACCESS and DBLOAD procedures for indirect access to DBMS data. Although SAS still supports these procedures for database systems and environments on which they were available for SAS 6, they are no longer the recommended method for accessing DBMS data.

See Selecting a SAS/ACCESS Method for information about when to use each method.

Not all SAS/ACCESS interfaces support all of these features. To determine which features are available in your environment, see Introduction.

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