How can I use Access 2010 as the front end and SAS as the back end

[jerry898969]

Hello,

I'm trying to create a Access front end with a SAS back end but I'm not sure how to connect to SAS from Access.  We do have a sas/share server setup.

Thank you for any help you can give me

Jerry

[LinusH · Accepted solution]

There's lot of documentation on support.sas.com that describes how to connect to SAS via SAS ODBC driver.

[Reeza]

Can you define/clarify your question?

What are you trying to do in your 'front end' and what are you doing in the 'back end'? And a standard ODBC connection doesn't work?

[AndreasMenrath]

You can also user OLEDB to connect to your SAS share server (SAS(R) 9.3 Providers for OLE DB: Cookbook).

Please clarify what your front end and your backend should do.

Do you want to just load SAS tables into your Access DB or do you need to execute SAS code in your backend?

[jerry898969]

Thank you both for your replies.  We were going to connect a access form app to sas.  We are going with "C#" instead.

Thank you

[AndreasMenrath]

I have programmed some SAS applications with C# in the past and can tell you that you can expect some surprises on your way.

The best way to start is to read the windows client developer's guide and the oledb cookbook mentioned before.

But expect some resistance when you read or update data with SQL:

- mapping .Net data types to SAS data types (with formats and informats) and vice versa

- standard mechanisms of .Net to update an DataTable will not work with the SAS provider. So you have to write all your operations in SAS SQL.

- if you also want to execute some SAS scripts and interact with a workspace server take a close look at the object keeper.

Good luck!