Is there any issue reading old SAS data sets on SAS Viya?

[kisumsam]

Hi there, my team is migrating from SAS 9.1.3 to SAS Viya and it's a fairly big upgrade. My boss is concerned about SAS Viya having issues running some of the older data sets created in SAS 9.1.3. In addition, another department here will still be using SAS 9.1.3 and they are expected to read data sets created by the new machine (Viya). 

I know that it is still a .sas7bdat file but does anyone have any issues running the data sets across the two very different versions of SAS?

Thanks in advance.

[Reeza · Accepted solution]

You will have issues, mostly because I think 9.1 is still 32 bit and Viya will be 64 bit. 

This mostly talks about the issues moving up, but not for moving back which will be the issue. If you're maintaining the licenses for 9.1.3 I would strongly recommend an upgrade - it's about a teenager and teenagers are unruly at the best of times. 

Some of the gotcha's

https://blogs.sas.com/content/sasdummy/2012/05/01/64-bit-gotchas/

Basically you won't have much issues moving from 9.1.3 to Viya but you will have issues moving data from Viya back to 9.1.3. 

[Kurt_Bremser]

First of all, the "other department" has to migrate to a current SAS three days before yesterday. 9.1.3 is ANCIENT, not old. Still running it crosses the border from sloppy to gross neglicence.

On top of that, 9.1.3 is not certified for supported Windows versions, so if they run it on Windows, their OS probably constitutes a grave security risk. If something happens, someone's going to get fired.

Once that migration is done, it only depends on the platforms. If everything is running on the same OS, you're fine.

[kisumsam]

Thanks Kurt. Our SAS 9.1.3 runs on Windows but Viya runs on a new Linux server. They aren't the same OS. Is this going to cause issues when using the data sets across the two versions of SAS?

[Kurt_Bremser]

Set up Viya, and migrate all data there. Use proc cport/cimport so you don't have to live with CEDA (Cross Environment Data Access) afterwards.

As soon as the new platform is running and confirmed functional, decommission the old ones. Let NO ONE continue to run 9.1.3 on outdated, insecure and unsupported platforms.

[kisumsam]

Unfortunately it is not my call to stop using SAS 9.1.3 at my work place. From my understanding, they will be using it for the next little while and they are going to want to run programs on the older version of SAS with data set created in Viya.

I understand we are going to run into security issues but if the management insists on doing this, do you think SAS 9.1.3 can handle data sets created in Viya?

[Kurt_Bremser]

You will probably be forced to cport/cimport the datasets back to 9.1.3. Since you will also have to copy them over the network, that should not be so much of an issue with regards to time needed.