topic Re: SAS query - Dataset Owner in SAS Programming

How to find the file Owner information from the Operating System metadata.

scb — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 09:17:26 GMT

May I know how to find the owner of a SAS dataset in SAS codes? Any example? Thanks.

Re: SAS query - Dataset Owner

PeterClemmensen — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 08:59:47 GMT

What do you mean by the owner? 🙂

Re: SAS query - Dataset Owner

scb — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 09:06:56 GMT

The creator of the SAS dataset.

How to find creator of a Dataset

RW9 — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 09:11:07 GMT

What software are you using? In Base SAS this information is not available. If your using one of the DI pakcages or something like that it may be in the metadata. Please post your question in the relevant area and give your thread titles meaningful titles: "SAS Query", or "SAS Macro query" are not good thread titles.

Re: SAS query - Dataset Owner

scb — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 09:11:52 GMT

The creator of the SAS dataset. Please refer to the file.

Re: SAS query - Dataset Owner

PeterClemmensen — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 09:12:13 GMT

I'm not sure about other applications, but it is not available in Base SAS at least 🙂

Re: SAS query - Dataset Owner

PeterClemmensen — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 09:13:21 GMT

Unless the code is properly documented, which of course all code is 😉

Re: SAS query - Dataset Owner

RW9 — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 09:16:34 GMT

What you show there is the operating system information, therefore you need to be able to execute command line syntax to access it:

filename tmp pipe 'dir "c:\temp" /q';

data want;
  length buff $2000;
  infile tmp;
  input;
  buff=_infile_;
run;

Do note however that that information is nothing to SAS, its also very easy to change that kind of information, so any process using that information is inherently flawed. You are better off using a metadata control system like DI or something if you need to track creation/access etc.

Re: SAS query - Dataset Owner

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 09:56:44 GMT

"Owner" is not very specific

- is it the design owner

- is it (one of) the people who use it

- is it the userid used when physically writing the dataset file

- is it the userid used when registering table metadata

The dataset file format has no information for owner, AFAIK.

How to determine the physical userid depends on the operating system where SAS is used.

Re: SAS query - Dataset Owner

FK1 — Mon, 20 Nov 2017 12:04:37 GMT

You can use the "Finfo" (=file information item) function which is offered by SAS:

data info;
   length infoname infoval $60;
   drop rc fid infonum i close;
   rc=filename('abc','physical-filename');
   fid=fopen('abc');
   infonum=foptnum(fid);
   do i=1 to infonum;
      infoname=foptname(fid,i);
      infoval=finfo(fid,infoname);
      output;
   end;
   close=fclose(fid);
run;

Depending on the Operating System (Windows, UNIX, z/Os, etc.) you get some information bits about your DataSet.

For more information:

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lefunctionsref/63354/HTML/default/viewer.htm#p0cpuq4ew0dxipn1vtravlludjm7.htm

Cheers,