topic Can we extract the name of the user who has modified a dataset using SAS script wihout Shell cmd in SAS Programming

Can we extract the name of the user who has modified a dataset using SAS script wihout Shell cmd

nidhishnagpal0 — Thu, 18 Apr 2019 10:11:06 GMT

Hi,

I want to extract the name of the user who has modified a sas dataset (All users who has modified a SAS dataset ever in history) . My SAS grid is based on linux and I don't have authorisation to run shell script through SAS EG.

Is there a possible solution for this using SAS programming only??

Thanks in advance

Nidhish

Re: Can we extract the name of the user who has modified a dataset using SAS script wihout Shell cmd

andreas_lds — Thu, 18 Apr 2019 10:35:26 GMT

I am not a Linux-expert, but i don't think that the filesystem stores the change history of files. Maybe you can get the userid of the last person that changed the file. The function finfo is able to retrieve meta-information of files and folders, please check the documentation.

Re: Can we extract the name of the user who has modified a dataset using SAS script wihout Shell cmd

AllanBowe — Thu, 18 Apr 2019 12:07:48 GMT

Yes! With some caveats. The most 'native' way to do this is to switch on generation datasets, see here: https://documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=lrcon&docsetTarget=p0apy93gsj2bzmn1awyqfe7kklkp.htm&docsetVersion=9.4&locale=en

You can also track this using APM, see this communities thread here: https://communities.sas.com/t5/Administration-and-Deployment/RE-How-to-track-who-accessed-what-table-and-columns/td-p/211083

There are commercial solutions too, worth mentioning:

For wider tracking of all changes to data structures where the metadata is held in SAS, there is an upcoming solution called METL (based on ARM): https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/metl-metadata-warehouse-system-winston-groenewald/

For an easy to use interface for tracking changes to data (what changed, by whom, who signed it off, for what reason, when - with downloadable reports) there is https://datacontroller.io (disclaimer - my company made this product).

Re: Can we extract the name of the user who has modified a dataset using SAS script wihout Shell cmd

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 18 Apr 2019 12:03:00 GMT

To follow changes, you can use the audit trail. But a complete rewrite of the dataset will remove that, and only the user creating the dataset can be determined.