SAS Metadata Service documentation

[AndreasMenrath]

Hi Chris,

i would like to use the SAS Metadata Service from Integration Technologies (see: Integration Technologies: Windows Client Developer's Guide http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/itechwcdg/61500/HTML/default/viewer.htm#wininst.htm) in a .Net environment.
I searched for some documentation and code samples, but haven't found anything.
So what is the prefered way to access SAS metadata via .Net? Is there any documentation or do i need to do the hard trial and error way to figure out how this SAS/IT component works?

Thanks in advance,
Andreas

[ChrisHemedinger]

Andreas,

There aren't many customer-facing examples in .NET for dealing with SAS metadata, I'm afraid.

However, SAS EG and SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office are .NET applications, as you might know, so you should feel confident that .NET access to metadata is a well-supported mechanism.

The components to use are SASObjectManager (to connect) and definitions from the OMI.tlb (type library) -- all of the access to metadata and SAS workspaces is via COM interop.

The StoredProcessService.chm file in the SAS\SharedFiles\IntegrationTechnologies folder has some partial examples particular to stored process discover/running. You might be able to glean something from that.

Chris

[AndreasMenrath]

Hi Chris,

thanks for your reply. I know that there are some nice SAS .Net applications out there. The problem with the COM Interop classes is that there isn't any documentation available as well.

It took me several hours to do the most basic operations with the managed SAS.Metadata.dll, like connecting to a metadata server and read the content of a metadata folder. I think it's very sad that SAS only has some support material for accessing metadata for Java programmers.
In my opion a 'well-supported mechanism' should also provide some nice documentation and code examples. Just the class- and methodnames in the .dll file and the need to figure out the mechanism behind the API by a lot of time consuming trial and error should not be called a best practice to use a SAS product!

Andreas