SAS Companion for the Microsoft Windows Environment

Application Integration

In addition to communications made possible with pipes, DDE, and external DLL access, more support is now available in

e-mail

Enhancements to e-mail include added support for Microsoft Exchange Server. For more information, see Introduction to Using Groupware with the SAS System.

Lotus Notes

Lotus Notes support has been improved so that SAS System output can be exported with formatting information, such as line breaks, retained. Report output can now be directly exported to Lotus Notes for groupware sharing without changing the report format that was generated. For more information on using Lotus Notes, see Introduction to Using Groupware with the SAS System.

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)

Two ODBC drivers are available under the SAS System under Windows, the SAS ODBC Driver and the Universal ODBC Driver.

The SAS ODBC Driver is included in the base SAS System. It provides read and write access to ODBC data for both local and remote (requires SAS/SHARE and SAS/SHARE*NET) SAS servers to retrieve and update SAS data. The SAS ODBC Driver allows the use of variables names up to 32-bytes as well as the use of name literals. For more information on installing the SAS ODBC Driver, see the installation documentation for the SAS System under Windows. For more information about configuring and using the SAS ODBC Driver, see SAS ODBC Driver User's Guide and Programmer's Reference.

The Universal ODBC Driver enables other applications to access SAS data without requiring access to the SAS System. The Universal ODBC Driver provides read-only access to ODBC data.

The Universal ODBC Driver is significant because it enables other applications, such as Microsoft Excel, to directly access data stored in SAS formats without requiring the SAS application software. For organizations that store large amounts of SAS data on PC networks, this driver opens up the server data to more applications than ever before.

The Universal ODBC Driver is sold separately and operates only on Windows platforms. The driver provides access to the standard data sources, including SAS data sets, CFO Vision financial databases (FDBs), SAS multidimensional database (MDDB) files, and JMP files. This driver also supports access to SAS data generated on other platforms, such as UNIX and OpenVMS.

For more information on the Universal ODBC driver, see Using the SAS UODBC Driver to Access SAS Data from Other Applications.

the SAS System Viewer

In addition to supporting both Version 6 and Version 8 SAS data formats, the viewer has enhancements in

active document support: The SAS System Viewer can be activated from within other applications that support the ActiveX Document interface (such as a Web browser) to provide a more consistent interface across applications.
improved printing support: The Viewer now handles pagination that is embedded in SAS output files. When these types of files are browsed, they can be correctly viewed and printed. Margins, styles, headers and footers can be set to customize the printed output. Additionally, both text and table information can be scaled to allow more information to be printed per page. The settings are saved to the SAS Registry to be used the next time a file is printed.
bookmark support: The Viewer provides additional support to bookmark text patterns for both the text and table-based file types. A text pattern can be assigned a color to stand out from the rest of the text. The patterns can be assigned prior to opening a file and are saved to the SAS Registry.
workbook view support: When you are viewing multiple windows simultaneously, the Viewer allows the selection of a tabbed workbook view to facilitate navigation. Normal multiple window viewing is also available.
data set view support: The Viewer now provides support for switching between different views of a data set. The formatted, unformatted, and variable information of a data set can be viewed in the main SAS window. This provides additional support for exporting or printing the view of the data.
export support: The Viewer provides support to export table-based file types to a file or the clipboard. The supported export file formats are CSV (comma delimited), Text (tab delimited), and Formatted Text (space delimited). Portions of the table may be exported, or the entire view of the table may be exported to a text-based file.
data subsetting support: To facilitate the viewing of very large SAS data sets, the Viewer can be configured to subset (filter) the number of records (observations) and the sorted order, and process a WHERE clause if one is provided. This allows much larger data files to be viewed without exhausting system memory. The settings are saved in the SAS Registry and are used the next time that a file is opened.
HTML help: The viewer now provides help in HTML format if Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.02 or above is installed. If Internet Explorer is not installed, help is not available.

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