Connecting to Two Remote Servers

[dscamelo]

Greetings!

I need help connecting to a second remote server.

The way I usually work with the EG is I set up the Tools > Connections > Profiles and save the remote server, my username and password.

However, this time I need to connect to a second server (with another address, username and password) while still connected to the main one. The username and password are the same between servers.

Is there any way for me to do this? I need to use files which are in both servers, and want to remove any manual intervention from the process (i.e. copying the table manually).

Thank you!

[SASKiwi · Accepted solution]

Enterprise Guide requires you to set up one Connection Profile for each remote SAS server. You can open more than one connection profile in EG, but an EG project or program has to run completely on one profile / server at a time. You can't split a job so it partly runs on one server and partly on another.

If both of your SAS servers run on the same OS then you would be able to easily share SAS data between them by storing the data in a shared folder location. However the EG project / program must remain separate for each server, and you have to manually switch connection profiles when you want to change servers.

There is a SAS product available that will give you better flexibility - SAS/CONNECT would enable you to programmatically switch where processing happens all within the same job as well as providing the ability to transfer data. SAS/CONNECT would have to be installed on both SAS servers for this to work.

[nhvdwalt]

Fully agree with @SASKiwi

If you can, then SAS/Connect is definitely the better option. Very powerful product with many uses.

If SAS/Connect is not possible and you are looking at a shared file system, be very careful not to fall into the NFS trap. Generally, NFS is not a good solution for data transfers. This is a big topic on it's own, so I won't go into it. Just to raise the flag if the discussion comes up...

[dscamelo]

Thank you both for your replies, @SASKiwi, @nhvdwalt.

I'll go ahead and check if SAS/Connect is an option here. If it is, where do I get the basics on how to use it?

If not, I'll think of a workaround. Thanks again.

[nhvdwalt]

This is the user guide, but a quick Google for examples will surface many results...

http://documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=connref&docsetTarget=connref.pdf&docsetVersion=9.4&locale=en

[SASKiwi]

Like @nhvdwalt, I'm a big fan of SAS/CONNECT. We use it ourselves for SAS VA load jobs which we run from our main SAS environment, to remotely load on VA - really powerful and flexible. Of course there is a cost involved but you can weigh that up by comparing it to the benefits.