topic Re: Copying SPSS Logic to SAS in Administration and Deployment

Copying SPSS Logic to SAS

RichardL — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 20:12:26 GMT

There is a series of data transformations and process steps in SPSS that I would like to copy and migrate to SAS. --- I'm not concerned with moving data from SPSS to SAS, but instead I would like to copy the underlying logic to SAS. Does SAS provide a means to do that, or are there an external tools that would take care of this?

Thank you for your help!

Re: Copying SPSS Logic to SAS

Reeza — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 20:20:46 GMT

I don't think there are tools that can do this reliably (as far as I know). There are probably consultants or some manual work

Re: Copying SPSS Logic to SAS

ballardw — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 20:57:24 GMT

I used to spend a certain amount of time going the other way SAS program => SPSS. What I learned is you want to understand the whole process and use the different tools appropriate to each piece. Most numeric transformations will be pretty routine but look very closely at anything involving text. As I recall I was always cursing at SPSS for the weak choice of text manipulation tools and some pretty stupid defaults such as Length returning the declared length of the variable not the actual length of value as SAS does.

Re: Copying SPSS Logic to SAS

SASKiwi — Sat, 18 Apr 2015 02:06:42 GMT

The best advice I can give when migrating logic from one language to another is to ensure you understand the processes involved as ballardw has said.

I've been involved in such projects and found that you often encounter errors in the source systems, that if you just blindly copy you will repeat the same mistakes.

Also test the output in both systems to ensure that it is identical, or if it is not identical to be able to explain the differences, for example when correcting errors.