Can we extract the name of the user who has modified a dataset using SAS script wihout Shell cmd

[nidhishnagpal0]

Hi,

I want to extract the name of the user who has modified a sas dataset (All users who has modified a SAS dataset ever in history) . My SAS grid is based on linux and I don't have authorisation to run shell script through SAS EG.

Is there a possible solution for this using SAS programming only??

Thanks in advance

Nidhish

[andreas_lds]

I am not a Linux-expert, but i don't think that the filesystem stores the change history of files. Maybe you can get the userid of the last person that changed the file. The function finfo is able to retrieve meta-information of files and folders, please check the documentation.

[AllanBowe · Accepted solution]

Yes!  With some caveats.  The most 'native' way to do this is to switch on generation datasets, see here:  https://documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=lrcon&docsetTarget=p0apy93gsj2bzmn1awyqfe7kklkp.htm&docsetVe...

You can also track this using APM, see this communities thread here:  https://communities.sas.com/t5/Administration-and-Deployment/RE-How-to-track-who-accessed-what-table...

There are commercial solutions too, worth mentioning:

For wider tracking of all changes to data structures where the metadata is held in SAS, there is an upcoming solution called METL (based on ARM):  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/metl-metadata-warehouse-system-winston-groenewald/

For an easy to use interface for tracking changes to data (what changed, by whom, who signed it off, for what reason, when - with downloadable reports) there is https://datacontroller.io (disclaimer - my company made this product).

[Kurt_Bremser]

To follow changes, you can use the audit trail. But a complete rewrite of the dataset will remove that, and only the user creating the dataset can be determined.