Connect Power BI to SAS library via ODBC as a stable connection

[andreas3999]

I have a SAS library that I would like to connect to from Power BI. After doing some research online I have gotten the impression that setting up a local ODBC connection is a possibility. 

I have set up the ODBC connection and it seems to work. The problem is however when I connect to a data source with ODBC in Power BI. Then the connection is initiated, a SAS window with a log appears, but is disconnected after 200 milliseconds. The same happens if I try to get data from the ODBC connection with Excel. While using Excel I am able to retrieve the tables, but not able to get a stable connection. The only way I have been able to get a stable connection is with pyodbc, by using AUTOCOMMIT=TRUE. 

Does anyone know I can get a stable connection to SAS with ODBC so that I use it with Power BI? Any help is appreciated!

[SASKiwi]

Your best option for this type of problem would be to open a track with SAS Tech Support since it appears to be intermittent and most likely needs further investigation.

If you want a more reliable way of reading SAS tables from Power BI, we load ours into SQL Server using SAS/ACCESS to ODBC from where Power BI reads them. We very rarely have any problems with this approach.