topic Re: how to connect SAS Enterprise to Azure Blob storage account in SAS Enterprise Guide

how to connect SAS Enterprise to Azure Blob storage account

beebeebee — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 17:33:44 GMT

my software version is this:

SAS Enterprise Guide 7.15 HF8 (64-bit)
SAS version 9.4

thank you!

Re: how to connect SAS Enterprise to Azure Blob storage account

SASKiwi — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 23:07:30 GMT

Start by checking what SAS/ACCESS products you have available to you and post here:

proc product_status;
run;
proc setinit;
run;

AFAIK SAS 9.4 can't process BLOBs, only character and numeric data.

Re: how to connect SAS Enterprise to Azure Blob storage account

beebeebee — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 01:42:54 GMT

thanks for your reply.

i am looking to get "files" containing plain text from Azure Blob storage.

the original question is, what is the connection string to an Azure Blob storage?

my intention is to perform REST calls as documented here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/storageservices/blob-service-rest-api

Re: how to connect SAS Enterprise to Azure Blob storage account

StefanosKe — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 07:31:01 GMT

Does anyone know if this is still not possible?

Re: how to connect SAS Enterprise to Azure Blob storage account

SASKiwi — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 20:46:39 GMT

This is the answer I got when I asked Google:

You will need to provde more details regarding your specific requirements.

Re: how to connect SAS Enterprise to Azure Blob storage account

StefanosKe — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 09:23:38 GMT

- there is this post https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/Using-Azure-Blob-Storage-for-sas7bdat-files-with-SAS-Viya-Part-1/ta-p/906563 for accessing sas7bdat files in Azure blob via Viya.

- In this post: https://communities.sas.com/t5/New-SAS-User/Read-SAS-datasets-stored-on-Microsoft-Azure-ADBL-using-SAS9-4-or/td-p/861155

@ChrisHemedinger suggests a solution to use Proc HTTP and download the data locally, but as you can imagine this is not ideal. Chris also mentions that assigning a fileref to Azure Blob Storage is possible in SAS Viya. Cant we also do something in SAS EG/9.4, say via NFS?

Re: how to connect SAS Enterprise to Azure Blob storage account

SASKiwi — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 20:12:20 GMT

Your questions are probably best addressed by submitting them in a Tech Support track. The fact that Viya has built-in Azure blob storage capability doesn't necessarily mean something similar is possible in SAS 9.4.

Re: how to connect SAS Enterprise to Azure Blob storage account

StefanosKe — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 14:05:49 GMT

we are receiving support from a local partner. I will post here the solution when we have it. ty!