SAS Data Migration

[vijayanand]

Hi,

We are migrating SAS datasets from AIX to Linux machines.  There are many ways to do this using different sas procedures. However, we tried doing it using SFTP process between the two servers.

With SFTP, we could transfer the sas dataset from AIX to Linux and compared both the datasets using PROC COMPARE and found that both the datasets are matching.

In case of an indexed sas dataset, we transferred both files (data and index  .sas7bdat and .sas7bndx) using sftp and compared using PROC COMPARE.  Here the data is matching , but the  target dataset on Linux machine doesn't have index created in it.

We know that PROC DATASETS can be used to create the index on a sas dataset.  Is there a way in SAS to couple these two files (.sas7bdat and .sas7bndx) so that the dataset on the target would also have an index.

Thanks,

Vijayanand.

[Kurt_Bremser]

With a change in CPU architecture, I would recommend cport/cimport and re-creation of indexes and such.

[maggiem_sas]

I agree, you probably want to move your SAS libraries from source to target environments by using PROC MIGRATE or  PROC CPORT & PROC CIMPORT.

Your data sets were created for use in AIX. SAS can read the data sets under Linux by using CEDA processing. If you try running something like a PROC CONTENTS, you should see a CEDA message in the log. CEDA is transparent but has several limitations. For example, indexes cannot be accessed. 

When you use SAS utilities like PROC CPORT/CIMPORT or PROC MIGRATE to copy a SAS library, you change the file format to be completely compatible with the new environment, and the PROCs will re-create indexes on the target. CEDA is not invoked after this conversion.

If you don't want to start over on the source environment, I think you could also use PROC DATASETS or the DATA step on the target to replace (overwrite) each data set individually with the needed indexes, which would also fix the file format.