topic Re: Sending email with attachment from Mainframe SAS in ODS and Base Reporting

Sending email with attachment from Mainframe SAS

nileshinus — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 13:48:41 GMT

Hi Team,

I am facing issues with SAS Email utility when the attachment size is crossing 10 MB.

The data(xml coding) is in Mainframe dataset and I am sending it to the receipients email using Email utility. I am using EXTENSION='xls'. Due to the large size of the file, the job is failing to send an email.

When I downloaded the file manually and did SAVE AS .xlsx, its size reduced considerably.

Is there any way to send the mainframe dataset with .xlsx extension as email attachment?

I have seen couple of posts which were talking about some macro. The macro uses Vbscript and do the conversion in Windows folder. I am not sure whether that will help for mainframe dataset as well.

Please help...

Thanks,

NMJ

Re: Sending email with attachment from Mainframe SAS

RW9 — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 14:08:59 GMT

Hi,

There is another discussion from today on the subject of sending Excel files via email. Simply put, Excel is not a good medium for data transfer, nor is email which is limited in size and not secure. I would advise you to investigate proper data transfer formats - XML, CSV, XPT etc. and validated, secure methods of shipping data such as SFTP, secure portal, secure messaging, databases etc.

https://communities.sas.com/t5/General-SAS-Programming/xlsb-export-problem-with-big-number-of-rows-and-columns/m-p/263098

Re: Sending email with attachment from Mainframe SAS

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 14:21:31 GMT

Do you send data or do you send a report? Data is better sent with a minimalist file format like CSV. If you have a report with formatting (eg using ODS TAGSETS.EXCELXP), then you might try to reduce the file size by compressing, if such a tool is present on your mainframe.

.XLSX is basically XML compressed with a zip algorithm. That's why your manually created xlsx was so small.

Re: Sending email with attachment from Mainframe SAS

ballardw — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 19:43:08 GMT

Our IT department has at times set some sever limits on email accounts. That file would not have been sent because under those settings the total size of a users email mail-box would be exceeded. You might want to check with your IT staff if you are running into a similar situation.