NOTE Interpretation

[djbateman]

I have recently been given data from a new database.  Currently, I am already not a fan of the design of the database.  Every time I use a data table (in a DATA set or a PROC) in any way, I get the following note:

NOTE: Data file FV07.AE.DATA is in a format that is native to another host, or the file

encoding does not match the session encoding. Cross Environment Data Access will be used,

which might require additional CPU resources and might reduce performance.

Can someone tell me if ignoring this note will ever cause me to run into any issues, or is this something that I should try to fix?  Since it is not a WARNING or an ERROR, I didn't think it was worth fiddling with if I don't need to.  I just don't know what the note means or how to get rid of it if I need to.

[Tim_SAS · Accepted solution]

Searching for "Cross Environment Data Access" on http://support.sas.com will get you your answer. Specifically it will lead you to this page: 15379 - Cross-Environment Data Access (CEDA) utilization message

[ghastly_kitten]

Briefly, this note usually appears, when you try to read a data set created by another SAS distributive running on a different architecture.

The most common: is when you have a bunch of data sets created with SAS x32 (x86) with cp1251 on one machine and try to read it by SAS x64 which usually use Unicode on another.

If this "file" is static, meaning you just don't change it over time - you can recode it to "native" by doing

data file;

     set file;

run;

on a SAS machine you preffer to be main SAS machine.