Access to SAS 9.4 data from SAS Viya

[MichaelBonanomi]

Hi

We run two SAS platforms:
1.a SAS 9.4_M5 BI platform and
2.a SAS Viya 3.4 platform with Visual Analytics
both on RHEL 7.6.

We want to share data between the two platforms.
We are able to access CASLIBs (Viya) from within EG (SAS 9) with these statements:

/* location of CA certificate */
options set=CAS_CLIENT_SSL_CA_LIST="/somepath/vault-deployTarget-ca.crt";
/* CAS controller */
options cashost="somemachine" casport=5570;
/* create CAS session */
cas mysess authdomain=_SASMETA_;
caslib _all_ assign;
/* create 9.4 data */
data want;
  set somecaslib.sometable;
run;
/* end CAS Session */
cas mysess terminate;

But vice versa we don't know how to access SAS 9.4 data from within SAS Viya.

Is there another possibility than just copy the SAS file to the Viya server and to treat it there as a Data Source? In SAS® Help Center / SAS Data Explorer / Connect to a Remote File System I don't find an explanation on how to specify the remote server.
Can please somebody share his or her experience?

Thanks in advance!
Michael

[alexal]

@MichaelBonanomi ,

The easiest way is to mount the directory with data from Windows on the CAS controller and use PATH as the source type.

[MichaelBonanomi]

Hi @alexal 
Thanks for replying!
As I mentioned we are on Red Hat Linux, not on Windows.
Anyway, I was wondering if there is a solution besides copying or mounting the SAS 9 data to the CAS controller.
If you consider my example on how I attach the CAS server in Enterprise Guide, then maybe you understand what I am reaching for.

Regards, Michael

[alexal]

@MichaelBonanomi ,

Doesn't matter, you should be able to mount your Windows share on the Linux server.

[MichaelBonanomi]

@alexal : Our SAS 9 workspace servers and data are on Linux as is our SAS Viya data. The data in question is not on Windows.

[JuanS_OCS]

Hi @MichaelBonanomi ,

a mount/share works OK, and it is maintaniable by your IT department. 

In addition,  for the cases where it is not always possible to do this, specially if Viya is VA and it could be within a DMZ:

For the cases when a physical connection is not available (or not interested to be used for any reason, such as security), a very traditional way to go is to use SAS/CONNECT.

This comes, however, at a price. You need this licensed on both SAS Viya and SAS 9, on each SAS compute server, but it allows you to create sessions on a very traditional way and just through SAS code. And SAS/Connect it just connect to a port number, and this communication can be secured at the highest levels of encryption.

[MichaelBonanomi]

Hi @JuanS_OCS 
Thanks for your contribution. We don't want to license SAS/CONNECT because SAS Institute states that SAS 9.4_M5 and SAS Viya 3.4 can do the bridging without SAS/CONNECT.
Maybe we will consider a mount as you propose.

[JuanS_OCS]

@MichaelBonanomi , makes sense. However I would think of SAS stating that sentence for the bridging from SAS 9 to SAS Viya, not the other way around.

Please correct me if I am wrong, I was not there and I am basing this understanding only on what I am currently aware of. There might be additional developments I am not aware of.

A question: is your SAS Viya deployed on multiple nodes, or just one server?

[MichaelBonanomi]

@JuanS_OCS , maybe you're correct. As a SAS administrator I was happy to tell my users: Hey look! Cool, now you can bridge from SAS 9 to SAS Viya! And they told me: Wow, impressive, but we need it the other way around. That's why I am searching for that.

Our Viya deployment is on five different nodes:

1. Viya Platform
2. CAS controller
3. CAS worker 1
4. CAS worker 2
5. CAS worker 3

Since Technical Support has become aware of my need, the offered me to open a track (7612766345: Access SAS 9.4 data from SAS Viya) and they promised to provide me with informations on the subject.

[JuanS_OCS]

@MichaelBonanomi yes, that kind of story rings a bell in my mind 🙂

That's good, I would follow SAS sugestions. @alexal has helped me already a couple of times, so you are in good hands.