topic Creating SAS .XPT file in SAS Programming

Creating SAS .XPT file

mmccarver — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 16:24:26 GMT

I am working with a 3rd party vendor who is requesting data sets in a SAS .XPT file. I am a web developer using C# and I have no experience with SAS.

Is it possible to create a .XPT file from scratch using a text writer?

Re: Creating SAS .XPT file

ballardw — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 16:33:24 GMT

I would assume that you have access to SAS in some form. Use of Proc Cport would be every so much easier.

You can either export all of the data sets in a library in to a single file

proc cport data=sashelp.class file='c:\folder\class.xpt';

run;

would create a transport file for the data set sashelp.class.

You can export all of the datasets in a library also

proc cport library=libname file='c:\folder\library.xpt' memtype=data;

run;

Re: Creating SAS .XPT file

mmccarver — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 16:41:46 GMT

Thank you for responding.

I have no access to SAS. To be honest, this is the first time I've ever had to work with it. Typically, clients ask for CSV files as a method of data transferring but they are asking for .XPT files.

Could I even create a .XPT file without SAS?

Re: Creating SAS .XPT file

RW9 — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 16:56:27 GMT

SAS V5 transport file format is open source. For instance this doc might help:

https://support.sas.com/techsup/technote/ts140.pdf

That being said, XPts are old, and a real pain. They are alos quite limited - variable label length and such like.

Re: Creating SAS .XPT file

data_null__ — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 17:08:16 GMT

@mmccarver wrote:

Thank you for responding.

I have no access to SAS. To be honest, this is the first time I've ever had to work with it. Typically, clients ask for CSV files as a method of data transferring but they are asking for .XPT files.

Could I even create a .XPT file without SAS?

Yes you can create a file using a language other than SAS, that can be read by SAS with the SAS XPORT engine. I believe this link will get you headed in the right direction.

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/movefile/69975/HTML/default/viewer.htm#p0ld1i106e1xm7n16eefi7qgj8m9.htm

If you don't have SAS I'm not sure how you can test it, perhaps post it here and someone can try to read it for you.

Re: Creating SAS .XPT file

mmccarver — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 19:54:47 GMT

Thank you for your help. I think we are going to try to purchase a tool that can convert a .CSV file to a .XPT file. Could someone point me in the right direction? Learning SAS is outside the scope of what we develop.

The client wants

SAS Transport V6

With file extension .XPT

I would like to avoid the purchasing of something we don't need.

Re: Creating SAS .XPT file

RW9 — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 09:17:38 GMT

I don't know of any tool to do that. Its should be relatively straight forward to write directly out as XPT though, the file format is well described:

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/movefile/69975/HTML/default/viewer.htm#p0ld1i106e1xm7n16eefi7qgj8m9.htm

Even give you some class information to get started.

The one above is v8, but you can also find v6:

http://support.sas.com/kb/46/944.html

TS140 in the above doc.

Re: Creating SAS .XPT file

data_null__ — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 14:05:46 GMT

@mmccarver wrote:

Thank you for your help. I think we are going to try to purchase a tool that can convert a .CSV file to a .XPT file. Could someone point me in the right direction? Learning SAS is outside the scope of what we develop.

The client wants

SAS Transport V6

With file extension .XPT

I would like to avoid the purchasing of something we don't need.

I think this may work

http://www.stattransfer.com/

you can download a free trial.

Re: Creating SAS .XPT file

wait1ess — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 03:20:06 GMT

Is V8 open-source?

Re: Creating SAS .XPT file

Tom — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 04:31:28 GMT

Since this old thread has been re-animated there are a number of packages for creating SAS transport file.

There is the READSTAT package that is written in C. There are wrappers for call this in the HAVEN package for R.

There is a nice sas7bdat package for R.

Similarly there are packages for Python.

Re: Creating SAS .XPT file

zenenceladus — Thu, 02 Dec 2021 04:48:28 GMT

To be honest if you do not want to lose your client find someone in academia or on FIVERR that is a SAS programmer and let them do it. SAS is a required format by the FDA and other regulatory agencies so fooling around with open-source programs of workarounds is probably a big mistake.