topic Re: How to parse multiple catalogs source code to find libname references (SAS 9.4) in SAS Programming

How to parse multiple catalogs source code to find libname references (SAS 9.4)

adnavv — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 10:20:10 GMT

Hello,

we need to identify the dependencies among 50 different catalogs in a SAS 9.4 environment (without SAS Studio, but with SAS Explorer).

For example, we would like to find all source code (scl, frame, screen, mainly) in our catalogs universe containing the path to the catalog named "gesco" ("/env/app/gesco").

It seems that the find function doesn't allow us to use this search criteria :

Is there another way to parse the catalog source code to query LIBNAME paths ?

Many thanks in advance,

Wanda

Re: How to parse multiple catalogs source code to find libname references (SAS 9.4)

Patrick — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 10:58:08 GMT

Some code like below should give you the list of all entries belonging to a specific catalog. Requires of course that there is a libname that assigns the folder with the catalog to the SAS session.

proc sql;
  create table want as
  select *
  from dictionary.catalogs
  where memname='GESCO' and memtype='CATALOG'
  ;
quit;

Re: How to parse multiple catalogs source code to find libname references (SAS 9.4)

adnavv — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 14:11:32 GMT

Thank you Patrick, but with this query, I can only get internal references to the catalog 'GESCO', although I know, for example, that in the init.scl file of another catalog (named 'GESBA'), there is the following reference : libname gesco "/env/data/gesco": how can I retrieve it ? Do the dictionary tables contain such information ?

Re: How to parse multiple catalogs source code to find libname references (SAS 9.4)

Tom — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 14:24:26 GMT

@adnavv wrote:

Thank you Patrick, but with this query, I can only get internal references to the catalog 'GESCO', although I know, for example, that in the init.scl file of another catalog (named 'GESBA'), there is the following reference : libname gesco "/env/data/gesco": how can I retrieve it ? Do the dictionary tables contain such information ?

See if you can do it with a data step.

filename src catalog 'mylib.gesba.init.scl';
data _null_;
  infile src;
  input;
  if find(_infile_,'gesco','i') then list;
run;

Re: How to parse multiple catalogs source code to find libname references (SAS 9.4)

ballardw — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 16:33:11 GMT

@adnavv wrote:

Thank you Patrick, but with this query, I can only get internal references to the catalog 'GESCO', although I know, for example, that in the init.scl file of another catalog (named 'GESBA'), there is the following reference : libname gesco "/env/data/gesco": how can I retrieve it ? Do the dictionary tables contain such information ?

Dictionary tables would only have the library if the library is active in the current session

Re: How to parse multiple catalogs source code to find libname references (SAS 9.4)

Patrick — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 22:57:35 GMT

@adnavv wrote:

Thank you Patrick, but with this query, I can only get internal references to the catalog 'GESCO', although I know, for example, that in the init.scl file of another catalog (named 'GESBA'), there is the following reference : libname gesco "/env/data/gesco": how can I retrieve it ? Do the dictionary tables contain such information ?

SAS catalogues are stored in SAS proprietary binary files with extension .sas7bcat

If you just want to search for all SAS catalog files then use a Unix find command like find / -type f -name "*.sas7bcat" 2>/dev/null
If you want to find code that assigns libnames to folders containing "*.sas7bcat" files then combine the find command with a grep to find all scripts with a path to a folder that contains a SAS catalog file. This will only give you a partial result though as there can also be pre-assigned libraries in SAS Metadata that contain catalogs.
If you want to know what's IN the catalogues then generate libnames for all the folders where you find a *.sas7bcat file and then you can use the SAS dictionary tables and Proc Catalog for further investigation.

Re: How to parse multiple catalogs source code to find libname references (SAS 9.4)

SASKiwi — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 23:33:06 GMT

SAS Note 23187 describes how you can print SOURCE and SCL catalog entries to external text files using PROC BUILD. You can then search the text files using SAS or other text search tools (Notepad++ is a good option). I assume that you would need SAS/AF installed and licensed to do this.

Re: How to parse multiple catalogs source code to find libname references (SAS 9.4)

Patrick — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 01:03:41 GMT

And there is also the filename CATALOG Access Method.

Re: How to parse multiple catalogs source code to find libname references (SAS 9.4)

SASKiwi — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 03:18:00 GMT

@Patrick - The CATALOG Access Method doesn't appear to work for SCL entries.

Re: How to parse multiple catalogs source code to find libname references (SAS 9.4)

adnavv — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 10:48:17 GMT

Thank you for sharing!

I have done a quick test with appending two catalogs source codes ('gesco', 'gesba'). The procedure has exported a total of 150 pages, which I still need to validate, but it may help me a lot.

Re: How to parse multiple catalogs source code to find libname references (SAS 9.4)

adnavv — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 11:04:56 GMT

We would need to extract the source code of each screen belonging to each catalog (*.sas7bcat). It seems that the PROC BUILD doesn't allow to export the screen source code..

Is there a another way to get it ?