When To Use a Viewer

A viewer is useful under the following conditions:

Publishing to the E-mail Transport

You want to publish a result-set package for delivery to consumers who use a view-only transport (such as e-mail). Because a SAS data set is not viewable in e-mail, an HTML or text viewer is needed to format the SAS data for a view-only presentation.

Publishing to Channel Subscribers

If you are publishing to a channel, the transports that are used by subscribers are unknown to you. Therefore, you might decide to format the entire package with the aid of a viewer to ensure maximum viewability for the broadest consumer audience. The viewer is applied to a package that is published only to subscribers who use e-mail delivery. The viewer is not applied to a package that is published to subscribers who specify delivery to message queues.

Extracting and Formatting SAS Data

With a viewer, you can extract specific package items and variables from a SAS data set entry and distribute to subscribers who use e-mail. Subscribers who use e-mail receive the package entries that the viewer extracts and formats. Subscribers who use queues receive the full package.

Formatting an Entire Package

Besides formatting a SAS data set package entry, you can also use a viewer to format other entries in the package (such as another HTML file, a text file, a binary file, or a reference) as input streams. Applying a viewer to the entire package provides a comprehensive presentation for viewing purposes only.

Publishing an Electronic Newsletter

A popular form of package output is an electronic newsletter. The basic template that imposes the look and feel of the document can contain static text or HTML coding. However, you can code the dynamic information (in the form of news articles or SAS data) as links to Web sites whose source data is continuously refreshed.

Publishing an Executive Level Summary

Delivery of SAS result sets and other text and graphical information via e-mail has the greatest value for an executive level consumer. The executive might have a requirement to view the data (for example in the form of summary tables) and to read text but might not necessarily need access to the raw data for continued processing, extraction, and delivery throughout the enterprise.