SAS Product Suggestions

In SAS Studio, when users share SAS programs as .sas files in SAS Content, they don't have standard file functionalities such as searching for given string in file contents. For example, I might want to find files *.sas containing substring such as out.company_owner or files *.cfg containing substring PROXY. in general, we'd like to have a function for finding regular expression within files of given mask in a given SAS Content folder recursively  ... View more

Denodo is a data virtualization tool capable of building intricate and efficient data structures connecting disparate data sources. Data virtualization is critical in enterprise environments due to the wide variety of data sources a large organization would possess. Our organization has recently implemented Denodo, but we are experiencing significant compatibility issues with our SAS 9.4 infrastructure as we are reliant on the generic SAS/ACCESS Interface to JDBC. In troubleshooting sessions with Tech Support, we have resolved one issue only to encounter another, over and over again. It has become clear that the source of these incompatibilities stem from the generic JDBC connector. An ACCESS engine specifically designed to communicate with Denodo would provide a true solution to our technical issues and frustrations. We hope that this connector would be compatible with SAS products including SAS 9.4, SAS Viya 3.5, and newer products. ... View more

We have a use case where our company files are stored in Sharepoint. It is currently difficult to access these files on VIYA and they manually have to be uploaded. We would like to be able to connect SharePoint to VIYA such that: 1. SharePoint files and folders are visible in SAS Studio Explorer folder tree and can be manipulated like standard files residing on the SAS Server. 2. SharePoint files are directly accessible to SAS Studio flows.     2.1.Allow a file residing in SharePoint to be imported/exported using the standard SAS Studio Import/Export functions.     ... View more

According to this usage note, there's an old defect for CONNECT USING together with OLEDB access: 48877 - A pass-through connection invokes the Data Link Properties dialog box even though an assigned OLEDB libref is also present (sas.com) CONNECT USING was imoplemnted because it's conventient to avoid keeping connection information in many places. Also, this especially nice when you want to generete the connections dynamically in PROC SQL. ... View more

It seems proc import can retrieve data from Excel if the data is in a sheet by itself using the "sheet=" statement, known range i.e., "A1:C10", or named range using the "range=" statement.  What I don't see is an easy way to import the data if it is an Excel Table.  Something like a "table=" statement in the code below to accomplish this would be extremely helpful.  I apologize if this already exists, I couldn't find anything.  Thanks in advance for your attention to this matter.   proc import out= WANT datafile= "C:\ExcelFile.xlsm" dbms= EXCEL replace; TABLE= "TBL"; run; ... View more

OPTION BOMFILE; is not being honoured when the text file (DAT, CSV, TXT, etc.) is included/updated in a ZIP file. I have two suggestions:   Extend OPTION BOMFILE so that it is functional in text files included/updated in a ZIP file, too Or at least, please update the SAS Documentation at both FILENAME ZIP and BOMFILE to let users know that BOM cannot be added in case the text file is included/updated in a ZIP file, and suggest a workaround like :     /* OPTIONS BOMFILE; Not honoured within a ZIP file */ %let path= <<define path here>> ; filename foo ZIP "&path./testzip_bom_u8.zip" ENCODING='utf-8'; data _null_;   file foo(shoes);   set sashelp.shoes;   IF _N_ = 1 THEN PUT ‘EFBBBF’x @; /* This adds the BOM to the beginning of the first record */   put region $25. product $14.; run;   ... View more

SAS Studio currently supports text, xml and python files in conjunction to the SAS program format.  Markdown is a widely used text markup format used in repositories of source code to document the functionality of a project and have the markup rendered in a variety of file formats such as HTML, LATEX, PDF etc.  Markdown files are used widely in git hosted repositories and is a defacto standard within the community.  Currently, if a user tries to open a markdown file, the user will be prompted to download the file instead of opening within the application.  This stops users from being able to effectively view git repository help docs or create developer and api documentation for SAS projects without leaving SAS Studio and using some other third party application.   Ideally SAS Studio would allow the following: Viewing of Markdown files with syntax highlighting of markdown elements View rendered markdown as html in a separate tab similar to results rendering currently used for ODS Allow creation and editing of files in markdown format with syntax highlighting. ... View more

Hi,   We are facing a strong showstopper with the current limitation of not allowing to mix INNER and OUTER joins in queries. Which is impacting the usage of our data providing system, to which SAS connects to.   Giving more options in the "libname jdbc" statement would give the user the ability to "match" the query generation in SAS with the real capacity of the underlying system using JDBC.   Here are a few of those options that would be nice to add: - underlying system supports using inner and outer joins together - this limitation in particular is much more impactful than the others. Most DBMS systems allow that today so SAS should allow that for JDBC datasources. - underlying system does not support JDBC escape sequences - pass custom connection properties (Mapping for java class Properties) - sometimes some JDBC drivers do not support passing all parameters as URL.   Thank you ! ... View more

Using Windows Authentication to SQL Server from SAS is a very popular authentication mechanism and it is not possible using CDE with Remote Data Agent. Please consider adding this useful feature. It is important for customers migrating from on-prem to cloud deployments. ... View more

As far as I understand, there is currently no option to use explicit pass-through with cloud data exchange. This is a major drawback for customers migrating to Viya, that over the years have made extensive use of this functionality on the SAS 9.4 environment. One of the main reasons explicit pass-through has been used, is to make use of non-standard SQL functions available from the database vendor. One such function that will require a lot of rewriting of code is the Qualify-statement available at several vendors.    Thanks in advance for your attention to this matter. ... View more

I've noticed that when i import a DI job that uses either a SQL execute or a user written code transform. The user written code that is imported to VIYA is on a single line and you must scroll to the right to see the code. It would be useful to either auto format the code upon import or provide a auto-format button. At the moment my work around is to copy the single line of code and then create a new .sas program, paste the code in and then auto-format. I then have to paste my code back into the node within the swinlane and then save. On the screen shot below, my original code has 100s of lines of code however it is imported onto a single line.   The .spk is a DI job. We are on a 9.4 m6 AIX 7.1 deployment... not sure if this is anything to do with the operating system. ... View more

I would like to suggest a feature for SAS Enterprise Guide that allows users to perform a global "Find and Replace" across all open programs at once.   Currently, the Find (Ctrl+F) and Replace (Ctrl+H) functions only work within a single program window. However, when working with multiple programs simultaneously, having an option to search and replace text across all open programs would greatly enhance efficiency and productivity.   Suggested Features: A new "Find and Replace in All Open Programs" option. The ability to preview and confirm changes before applying them. Support for regular expressions (optional but useful). This feature is available in many modern IDEs and would be a valuable enhancement to SAS Enterprise Guide.   Thank you for considering this suggestion!   P.S. My current version is SAS Enterprise Guide 9.4. ... View more

R has been around for decades and it isn't going away.   If SAS won't publish it's file format, then because R is open-source, you certainly should be able to add read/write abilities to SAS.   ... View more

Hello, I would like to request a feature enhancement in the Visual Investigator system related to search functionality (Version:  10.8 Hot Fix 4; SAS Viya Release: 3.5; Solution Version: 8.3.1). Specifically, we need a way to limit search results to a certain number of words or display only specific parts of a sentence. While attempting to achieve this using the "Show a text snippet if the search word is found in these fields" option in the Detail View, we did not get the desired outcome. Below are three cases that we tried:   1) No field configured 2) The “Informacion” Field that contains the searched word with minimum characters and samples   3) The “Informacion” Field that contains the searched word with maximum characters and samples The shown text snippet after performing search is the same as below for the three of the configurations like below: The only successful workaround we found was in the "Manage Environment" settings under "Configuration." By disabling the "defaultHighlightingEnable" toggle, restarting all services, and re-testing the system, we managed to achieve the expected behavior. However, this change applies across all entities, which is not ideal for our use case. To address this limitation, we kindly request a feature enhancement that would allow enabling or disabling this functionality on a per-entity basis. This would provide much-needed flexibility and precision for managing our search results across different entities. We believe this improvement would significantly enhance the functionality and usability of the system, particularly for teams managing large datasets with diverse entity types. Thank you for considering this request.   Best Regards! ... View more

When processing character in a data step, SAS silently truncates the result when assigning it to a variable with length shorter than the result. I know this is standard, documented behavior and that SAS programmers are generally aware of it. However in even mildly complex data steps, a small oversight can lead to truncations that are difficult to detect at all, let alone quickly find the source problem. So the idea is to add an option to report errors or warnings whenever a DATA step assignment statement truncates the value.   I'd guess that in 99% of these cases, the truncation is clearly undesired behavior, like in this example:     /* definition of shortvar; in practice, this may be imported or heavily processed data, so it isn't obvious what length it has */ data example1; shortvar = "short"; run; data example2; set example1; shortvar = shortvar || ' long'; /* silently truncates */ run; proc print data=example2; run; /* output: obs shortvar 1 short */     This type of truncation is obviously not desired because it happens when we try to add more characters. The result is that the variable appears unchanged and it isn't obvious why. ... View more

Good morning, I would like to suggest the idea of ​​making aesthetic changes in SAS 9.4 to allow a more friendly transition for users of this platform to SAS Viya 4. It would be good to allow, as in other platforms, a retro and new look for users and administrators of the platform, in view of a progressive adaptation. Thank you, regards ... View more

SAS Viya 4 - IKS Compatibility IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service ... View more

Hi, I think it would be beneficial to have Generation Data group like dataset in SAS similar to the format used in Mainframe. Generation Data Groups (GDGs) are group of datasets related to each other by a common name. The common name is referred as GDG base and each dataset associated with the base is called a GDG version. You can set the limit of the related files(generations). We can easily keep track of all generation of data sets. Any particular generation can be referred easily. We use lot of datasets which regenerates daily , monthly , yearly etc..   Consider I need to create daily transaction data for the month of May. If Generation Data Group is available, I would define the base like "Tran_May2024".  Then I would just create dataset daily in the below way.   Data Tran_May2024(+1); -- This will create the next available version.  set work_tran_table; run;   If need to point current or earlier version  i would use the dataset below. Tran_May2024(0) - Latest Version  Tran_May2024(-1) - Previous Version  Tran_May2024(-2) - 2 versions back   If I need the whole month data ,  i just refer the base    Data work_tran_may; set Tran_May2024;   --This would all the version available in the base  run;   you can have options like below   LIMIT – To limit the maximum number of generations.   NOEMPTY – Uncatalog only the oldest generation in GDG when the limit is reached. EMPTY – Uncatalog all the generations when a limit is reached. SCRATCH -Physically delete the dataset(generation) which is uncataloged. NOSCRATCH – Don’t Physically delete the dataset(generation) which is uncataloged.   This would help a lot when we create lot of datasets which are created in a repeatable fashion.    Thank Ravi                ... View more

It would be nice to be able to copy text from an individual cell in the list table. This is possible in a crosstab but it would be nice to mimic the excel function of copying from a regular table/cell for the list table.  ... View more