Happy to help! Some reading to get you started is at:
http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/acreldb/59618/HTML/default/app3-accgen8.htm
Comparing SAS/Access to Oracle and SAS/Access to ODBC, notice that both support the SAS/Access LIBNAME statement and the Pass-Through facility. The former (LIBNAME statement) allows you to connect to your database from SAS and look at those DBMS tables as if they were SAS data sets (i.e. native SAS data). Essentially, SAS/Access functions like a translator, converting Oracle conventions to SAS conventions just in time for whatever analysis needs to be done.
The Pass-Through Facility allows you to potentially have some or all of the data anlysis performed on the database rather than forcing SAS to do it. This tends to be EXTREMELY nice when possible -- why force every data point to be sent over the network for SAS to process when SQL in the database can handle quite a bit? More on Pass-Through is here:
http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/acreldb/59618/HTML/default/a000245480.htm
Okay, so what if you didn't get SAS/Access to ODBC or SAS/Access to Oracle? Well, to do processing in SAS you'd probably have to set up a process where you extracts the data from Oracle into a flat file (i.e. raw data file), store/transmit the raw data file to a location where SAS can access it, read the raw data file using SAS, then do your analysis on the resulting SAS data set. This sort of thing is done in many, many organizations... but it's not much fun. You have to re-export and import each time you want the SAS data to be updated. You have to write and maintain the SAS code to read the raw data file. You have to use database resources to export the file and SAS resources to read it in. If you only need to do this a few times a year, not such a big deal. If need to access the most recent DBMS data on a frequent basis, that's where a SAS/Access product could considerably improve your life! I'm not aware of any drivers from other software products that would allow you to move data directly into SAS. They may exist, I just haven't heard of any.
One final point: your SAS software sales rep will work with you to make sure you have the right products and that you're happy with the software. If you find out you really don't need a particular component, they will work with you to make things right. We're much more interested in creating a relationship to help solve your business problems over the long-term than making a buck selling you something you don't need!
Can you tell I work at SAS?
🙂