topic Re: Pulling data/files down from the mainframe in SAS Programming

Pulling data/files down from the mainframe

CharlesYu — Fri, 25 Jun 2021 19:07:20 GMT

Hi, Experts,

I'm unfamiliar with mainframe, and need some help understanding how to pull data from it. This might be a pretty basic question.

I have code working to connect:

%let sas_version =SAS94;
%let spawner_name = spawner;

OPTIONS SYMBOLGEN;

%let sy51=[xxxxx.xxxxx.xx.xxxx.xx];

/*
[some code to set &mainframe_user_id and &mainframe password]
*/

Signon sy51.spawner user="&Mainframe_user_id." password="&MAINFRAME_PASSWORD.";

rsubmit sy51.spawner;

proc setinit;
run;quit;

endrsubmit;

signoff &srvr..spawner;

^^that gives me a proc setinit for the mainframe, which is good.

Now, the user I'm (trying to) help tells me that there are datasets I need to access at some location on the mainframe. They look like:

abc.def.ghijk.lnm154.something.

How do I go about either writing a libname or importing these datasets?

Thanks in advance!

Re: Pulling data/files down from the mainframe

Kurt_Bremser — Fri, 25 Jun 2021 21:06:56 GMT

When you access the file, start the name with a single quote

libname xxx "'abc.def.ghijk.lnm154.something";

The single quote tells the system not to search in your "tree" (which starts with the MF username), but from the "root".

Re: Pulling data/files down from the mainframe

Patrick — Sat, 26 Jun 2021 04:06:51 GMT

From the SAS z/OS docu Assigning SAS Libraries Internally

And if you need to transfer the SAS datasets to your client environment then refer to the SAS\Connect docu (i.e. Remote Library Services or Proc Download).

....and should your data on the client side look "garbled" then best talk to someone at your site who's done such a transfer before (prior to getting into Proc Trantab and all the lovely encoding and codepage stuff).

Re: Pulling data/files down from the mainframe

jimbarbour — Sat, 26 Jun 2021 04:08:14 GMT

@Kurt_Bremser wrote:

When you access the file, start the name with a single quote
libname xxx "'abc.def.ghijk.lnm154.something";
The single quote tells the system not to search in your "tree" (which starts with the MF username), but from the "root".

It's been a few years since I've worked on a mainframe, but I believe you would then refer to the SAS dataset as xxx.something inside your SAS program. Borrowing from @Kurt_Bremser's code, something like this:

libname xxx "'abc.def.ghijk.lnm154.something";

DATA Want;
    SET  xxx.something;
RUN;

Jim