SAS Language Reference: Dictionary

Additional Version 7 Changes and Enhancements for OS/2, OpenVMS Alpha, OpenVMS VAX, UNIX, and Windows

This section describes changes and enhancements that are new for OS/2, OpenVMS Alpha, OpenVMS VAX, UNIX, and Windows, but which are not available on CMS or OS/390.

New and Enhanced Windowing Environment Features

Windowing Environment: External File Interface

The External File Interface (EFI) is a point-and-click graphical interface that you can use to read and write data that is not in SAS software's internal format. That is, you can read data from an external file and write it to a SAS data set, and you can read data from a SAS data set and write it to an external file.

The EFI now supports 32-character variable and data set names and is case sensitive for variable names. The EFI enables you to specify a logical record length for both list input data and list output data, and to store templates in a user-specified metabase repository. The EFI also generates simpler export DATA step code by using the Version 7 FILE statement options DSD= and DELIMITER=.

Windowing Environment: Import/Export Wizard

The Import/Export Wizard is a tool that transfers data between external data sources and SAS data sets. Depending on the operating environment, SAS supports additional external sources. The details for each operating environment are provided in the online help.

You can also use the wizard to generate IMPORT or EXPORT procedure statements. You can then save these statements to a file for later use. That is, you can include the statements in SAS programs to import or export data without using the wizard.

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