Here's the response I got from SAS Technical Support. A thorough answer, it looks like you can go either way:
SAS can access other vendors' data using either:
SAS/ACCESS to ODBC:communicates with other vendor's ODBC driver and necessary client software SAS/ACCESS to OLEDB:communicates with other vendor's OLEDB provider and necessary client software
So, depending on if your vendor supplies either and ODBC driver or OLEDB provider then SAS should be able to access the data with one of the above products.
Another option would be if your application can access other vendors' data using ODBC, then you could sit in your application and access SAS data sets using the SAS ODBC driver.
Here's a document to help setup the SAS ODBC Driver:
http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/odbcdref/64777/PDF/default/odbcdref.pdf
I found a paper at the link below. a method that they are using does not require any Access engine that might be helpful to you.
http://www.nesug.org/proceedings/nesug03/et/et003.pdf
Thanks,
Varsha
SAS Technical Support
Cary NC
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