SAS is more like 100 languages, at least. Every PROC has its own mechanisms because they are standalone. After spending a lot of time trying to parse the SAS language, that is my conclusion. As you state, it is very hard to parse.   I need to research more of your response (thanks, BTW) but the web is about to move toward WebAssembly. That paradigm shift is critical for new projects. ... View more

If the choice in VS Code is TypeScript vs JavaScript, choose TypeScript. Why? Anders Hejlsberg.He is the chief architect of C# and TypeScript (and possibly the best programmer in the world). TypeScript was built to put some rules around JS and make JS easier to debug and maintain.   Lots of changes are coming to the web development world (WebAssembly): TypeScript makes it more adaptable to those changes.       ... View more

Quick clarification. VS is Visual Studio and normally refers to the full IDE which is much more powerful than VS Code. VS Code is an open source editor (and a darn good one) that supports a lot of languages. I use both, VS daily, VS Code every other week or so.   So, VS and VS Code are very separate entities. A VS extension, which I built many moons ago, is probably not the direction. However, VS Code should be the direction. If a VS extension is desired, i have developed one a long time ago and it involved C# and interface compliance. ... View more

One other point: SAS datasets are also ODBC compliant so you can import them using Excel. ... View more

I use C# which has XML at its core. Yes, it runs on Linux too.   Look at XDocument which reads it straight in. Also, very good paper at this years SGF on VARCHAR and its support right now in SAS (outside of Viya). Some limitations however. ... View more

I use XML daily (and I use JSON a lot, which is similar). On XML, don't get too confused: it is really 2 things, elements (<LastName>) and attributes (<Name last='Churchill'...).   Which one to use is 100% in the hands of the person reading it. Hence, anyone can write whatever they want in those tags and anyone can interpret the tags as they see fit. XML is the easiest thing out there but freaks people out all of the time. Once you get the simplicity, all is well. It is just the way to get info on what is being moved. Think of it as a Goodwill form. What are you donating? This object. Ok, thank you.   BTW. XML is probably going away (replaced by JSON but that is another story). JSON is even simpler.   I never use SAS for XML or JSON. I front with something like Python or C#. Solutions should be future-proofed and I prefer engines that handle XML/JSON better. Let SAS do the data/proc side but use something else for dealing with hierarchical values. XMLMAP Is most likely C++ behind the scenes so roll your own, IMO.   The C# or Python is probably 5 lines of code so it is not hard.     ... View more

I would avoid DDE/VBS (both are deprecated even though they continue to work)  and use PowerShell instead. You may or may not be able to use PowerShell but is worth trying.   EG can also take add-ins using a .NET interface (I use C#). The add-ins are easy to do. See Chris' book on them at:   https://www.amazon.com/Custom-Tasks-Enterprise-Guide-Microsoft/dp/1607646781   ... View more

On #1 (and #2), I don't consider anything automated that requires manual input. If I was doing this myself, I would pre-process using PowerShell or a C# job to make sure I have what is needed. PowerShell is probably your best bet if you don't want to get into the intricacies of C#. Of course you can do it in other ways such as Java or Python but PowerShell would be the natural choice IMO.   Partial automation is like partial pregnancy. ... View more