Glossary

American National Standards Institute (ANSI)

the organization that coordinates the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. ANSI works with the International Organization for Standardization to establish global standards.

ANSI

See American National Standards Institute.

authentication

See client authentication.

Base SAS

the core product that is part of SAS Foundation and is installed with every deployment of SAS software. Base SAS provides an information delivery system for accessing, managing, analyzing, and presenting data.

catalog

See SQL catalog.

client authentication (authentication)

the process of verifying the identity of a person or process for security purposes. Authentication is commonly used in providing access to software, and to data that contains sensitive information.

column (variable)

a vertical component of a table. Each column has a unique name, contains data of a specific type, and has particular attributes. A column is analogous to a variable in SAS terminology.

data set

See SAS data set.

data source (source)

a table, view, or file from which information is extracted. Sources can be in any format that SAS can access, on any supported hardware platform. The metadata for a source is typically an input to a job.

data source name (DSN)

a persistent identifier that is associated with a data source definition. The data source definition specifies how to locate and access a data source, including any authentication (such as a user name and password) that a user must provide.

data type (type)

an attribute of every column in a table or database, indicating the type of data in the column and how much physical storage it occupies.

data view

See SAS data view.

database

an organized collection of related data. A database usually contains named files, named objects, or other named entities such as tables, views, and indexes.

database management system (DBMS)

a software application that enables you to create and manipulate data that is stored in the form of databases.

DBMS

See database management system.

driver

a special-purpose software program that enables two disparate software programs, such as an application and an API, to interact.

DSN

See data source name.

federated DSN (grouping data source name, grouping DSN)

a data source name that references multiple data sources. The data sources can be on the same DBMS, or on a different one.

grouping data source name

See federated DSN.

grouping DSN

See federated DSN.

library reference

See libref.

libref (library reference)

a SAS name that is associated with the location of a SAS library. For example, in the name MYLIB.MYFILE, MYLIB is the libref, and MYFILE is a file in the SAS library. See also SAS library.

metadata server

a server that provides metadata management services to one or more client applications.

missing value

a type of value for a variable that contains no data for a particular row or column. By default, SAS writes a missing numeric value as a single period and a missing character value as a blank space. See also null value.

null value

a special value that indicates the absence of information. Null values are analogous to SAS missing values. See also missing value.

observation

a row in a SAS data set. All of the data values in an observation are associated with a single entity such as a customer or a state. Each observation contains either one data value or a missing-value indicator for each variable.

SAS data file

a type of SAS data set that contains data values as well as descriptor information that is associated with the data. The descriptor information includes information such as the data types and lengths of the variables, as well as the name of the engine that was used to create the data. See also SAS data set, SAS data view.

SAS data set (data set)

a file whose contents are in one of the native SAS file formats. There are two types of SAS data sets: SAS data files and SAS data views.

SAS data view (data view)

a type of SAS data set that retrieves data values from other files. A SAS data view contains only descriptor information such as the data types and lengths of the variables (columns) plus other information that is required for retrieving data values from other SAS data sets or from files that are stored in other software vendors' file formats.

SAS file

a specially structured file that is created, organized, and maintained by SAS. A SAS file can be a SAS data set, a catalog, a stored program, an access descriptor, a utility file, a multidimensional database file, a financial database file, a data mining database file, or an item store file.

SAS library

one or more files that are defined, recognized, and accessible by SAS, and that are referenced and stored as a unit. Each file is a member of the library.

SAS Management Console

a Java application that provides a single user interface for performing SAS administrative tasks.

SAS Metadata Server

a multi-user server that enables users to read metadata from or write metadata to one or more SAS Metadata Repositories.

SAS variable (variable)

a column in a SAS data set or in a SAS data view. The data values for each variable describe a single characteristic for all observations (rows).

schema

See SQL schema.

server

software that provides either resources or services to requesting clients, possibly over a network.

source

See data source.

SQL

See Structured Query Language.

SQL catalog (catalog)

an implementation of the ANSI SQL:1999 standard for a named collection of logically related schemas. The catalog is the first-level (top) grouping mechanism in a data organization hierarchy that qualifies schemas.

SQL schema (schema)

an implementation of the ANSI SQL:1999 standard for a data container object that groups logically related objects such as tables and views and other objects that are supported by a data source such as stored procedures. The schema provides a unique namespace that is used along with a catalog to qualify names.

Structured Query Language (SQL)

a standardized, high-level query language that is used in relational database management systems to create and manipulate objects in a database management system. SAS implements SQL through the SQL procedure.

table driver

software that interacts with a data source in order to read from and write to proprietary file formats.

type

See data type.

variable

See SAS variable.

variable

See column.