SAS Newbie Opening .sas7bdat File On AIX Server Via Base SAS (x64)

[StuartM]

Hello,

We have SAS 9.3 installed on IBM AIX servers. We connect to these via SAS Enterprise Guide 5.1 (32 bit) and Base SAS (x64) clients. If I wish to view a .sas7bdat file on the SASApp via EG, I can just expand the "Files" folder and double-click. How can I do the equivalent via Base SAS ?

Thanks

Stuart

[Ksharp]

You need to talk to your AIX administrator , ask for a Share Fold between AIX and your client Win . It can be done by installing and configuring Samba

[Kurt_Bremser]

Yes, you need some kind of network connectivity that mounts the UNIX filesystem (or parts of it) into your Windows, then you can open the files in Windows. Be aware that actually working with data like this will be considerably slower than using SAS on the UNIX platform. The additional layer in the communication degrades the performance significantly.

Another option could be to export the GUI of the UNIX system onto your desktop and use Base SAS on AIX remotely.

[StuartM]

Why can this file be so easily opened in EG? Is this a feature of this product?

When I open Base SAS, I do use an AUTOEXEC script someone else wrote, that specifies the options metaserver and sigon server commands.

[Kurt_Bremser]

This is actually very simple for EG. Since both the Files and Libraries tree is obtained from the same Base SAS Workspace Server session, EG knows the physical path and the member name (and also knows that the WS has access to it), so it can make the workspace server assign a temporary libname (like EC100001) to that path and then read the dataset. Every time you open a dataset in a "Files" location, you will get an additional library in Libraries that has a generic name like that. These libraries will not persist over EG sessions.

[StuartM]

Is there some sample code I can use within Base SAS to access the file in the same way as EG ?

[Kurt_Bremser]

Once you double-click the .sas7bdat in EG, you will get a temprorary library assigned. Do refresh in the libraries tree, then right-click the new library, and select Properties. There you will find the complete physical path.

With this you can then code a libname statement in Base SAS to access the file like any other SAS dataset.

Example: file is found in Files/folder and is named xxx .sas7bdat.

After double-clicking, a new library (eg EC00001) is found. Its path shows "/home/username/folder".

(Once you know that the physical path to Files is actually /home/username, you can omit this part)

Code:

libname newlib "/home/username/folder";

proc print data=newlib.xxx;

run;

[jakarman · Accepted solution]

Eguide is having XCeed dll's. As long as you files are small enough you can use drag drop  from windows explorer to the sas explorer that is sitting on AIX.
Having that in files tab is probably wrong but is works. It will do a SAS-dataset open when being accessed using the SAS-Base on AIX that is behind Eguide. As Ceda has the goal of SAS datasets being that easily read you are seeing that behavior (SAS-Base Windows and AIX).

Seeing that Files tab you are placing data most likely in the system /home file-system. When this is the case you can run in political problems as Unix (AIX is Unix type) do not like that as it could harm the OS.