Hi:
I did not interpret your original question as asking how to code an HTML page or button to launch Excel for an ODS HTML-created file. Scott's answers are right on target. I just have a little extra "seasoning" to add to Scott's post:
In your original post you asked:
"I would like to create an excel report using ODS and then have a intranet link through SASWeb to the Excel file which is stored in Unix (not the intranet share) ? How can I achieve this ?"
Then, in your clarification, you said:
[pre]
title; footnote ;
ods listing close;
Ods html file='G:\Documents and Settings\SAHASRA\Desktop\MyExcelSASdata.xls' style=styles.sasweb;
Proc print data=TestData;
Run;
Ods html close;
Ods listing;
[/pre]
1. Instead of specifying the location (above ) of the excel file - - "MyExcelSASdata.xls", Can I dynamically generate the Excel file from my SAS dataset?
2. Next step is to create a hyperlink or button on my Web page. This hyperlink or button when clicked should open the above Excel file - - - "MyExcelSASdata.xls".
First, as I said previously. When you use ODS HTML, you are merely creating an ASCII text file that Excel knows how to open. Just because you name the file with the ".XLS" file extension, does not make it a "true, binary" Excel file. If you open your file 'G:\Documents and Settings\SAHASRA\Desktop\MyExcelSASdata.xls' with Notepad or some text editor, you will see HTML tags in the file.
So, knowing that you have just created an HTML file, let's look at your questions:
Q #1: Can you "DYNAMICALLY" generate the Excel file from your SAS dataset?? I don't know what you mean by this. Generally, when people use the term "DYNAMICALLY" they are talking about using either SAS/IntrNet or Stored Processes to create results that can be opened in Excel. I don't know whether you have those products. Your code snippet does not show the use of _WEBOUT or %STPBEGIN, so I am not sure whether you are using SAS/IntrNet or SAS Stored Processes. When you use ODS to create an HTML file -- even if the file extension is .XLS, the HTML file needs to be opened with the right application when the browser returns the results from the web server. SAS/IntrNet and Stored Processes on the BI Platform give you a way to control this. (More about this below)
As Scott explained, you could also just want the name of your output file to be dynamically generated from the name of the SAS dataset -- this is possible using some kind of SAS Macro variable or some kind of Macro processing.
[pre]
ods html file="&path.&fname..xls" style=styles.sasweb;
proc print data=&lib..&fname;
run;
ods html close;
[/pre]
where &LIB, &PATH and &FNAME were either created with %LET statements or CALL SYMPUT statements. This paper is a good introduction to SAS Macro Facility capabilities:
http://www2.sas.com/proceedings/sugi28/056-28.pdf
Q #2: Next, you said (in your clarification) that you wanted to create a hyperlink on your web page that would open the file created in #1. A standard ANCHOR
tag with an HREF= attribute is how you link to or open any file.
Assum... tag in order to make hyperlinks on web pages. Your browser may or may not launch Excel when the hyp...
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_a.asp
You could code the entire HTML page creation with SAS, as Scott suggested. On the other hand, if you were using SAS/IntrNet, you would not need to code the whole HTML page yourself and I would tell you to investigate the APPSRV_HEADER function to send the right content-type header for the browser; if you were using the BI Platform and stored processes, I would tell you to investigate the STPSRV_HEADER function to send the right content-type header for the browser -- but since I don't know whether you are running in the BI Platform or with SAS/IntrNet or how you are making your web pages, I can only suggest that you might want to work with Tech Support on this question. Tech Support can look at your data, your code and review your product suite and make suggestions about the best approach for what you want to do.
cynthia
