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Quentin
Super User

Well SAS isn't really an RDBMS (though of course it can be used like one), the SAS dataset is just a file format.  People pass around files (they do not pass around RDBMS tables), and people want to be able to read the files they receive.

 

It looks likes IBM provides free ODBC drivers to read SPSS files, I think that's a good thing. http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21483499  I'm not sure if .xlsx is fully open, but if not it was a huge step by Microsoft toward openness.

 

I see plenty of questions online like "How do I read [SPSS file / SAS file / Stata file /etc ] into [SQL server / Tableau / Excel/ etc ]?"

 

To my mind, giving the general public an easy way to read SAS datasets makes SAS more useful/valuable.  If not by opening up the format, then by providing free readers.  SAS already provides the SAS Universal Viewer free, which I think is great.  Why not also provide free ODBC drivers to allow the public to read SAS datasets without having a SAS license?  This would make SAS datasets more valuable.  In the same way as the FDA's acceptance of SAS XPORT (v. 5 ! : ) files makes SAS more valuable.  [FDA is able to accept them, because the the format is open (https://support.sas.com/techsup/technote/ts140_2.pdf). ]

 

As a side note, I'm curious how it works now for folks who develop Stat/Transfer, DataDirect drivers (which are used by many SAS/ACCESS products), and such.  When SAS comes up with a new data format, do they sit down and try to reverse-engineer it so that they can read the data (same as the R folks and python folks would do?)  Or does SAS partner with some of them to make it easier for them to read in SAS data correctly?

 

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Ksharp
Super User
SAS did offer the JDBC driver to allow to read SAS table by writing some Java code. 
But that is beyond my knowledge. Maybe you could give a talk to sas support and 
see what you could do. I believe even though you could read SAS table,but you 
need to write some Java Or C# code. I don't know .



ACBradley
SAS Employee

If the goal is to have MS SQL Server load the source data (originally in SAS7BDAT format) the user or admin would need to convert the SAS7BDAT file format to a supported format, such as ASCII CSV for MS SQL Server Transact-SQL or BULK INSERT to load to a DBMS table.  Conversely, SAS/ACCESS Interface offers ODBC based bulk loading into MS SQL Server.

Ideally you use SAS to push to SQL Server.  But if you can't, these are the standard drivers that you can use to pull SAS data in. 

 

You can also use Python -- via SASPy -- to read SAS data sets from an active SAS session and convert into Python pandas data frames.

JBailey
Barite | Level 11

Hey @Quentin,

 

Since this question is about Microsoft SQL Server, I think @ACBradley has your solution.  Have your DBA check-out the SAS Local OLE DB Provider link (which points to a great article by @ChrisHemedinger).

 

Best wishes,

Jeff

 

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