Using Spatial Data with SAS/GIS Software

Overview

SAS/GIS software organizes its spatial database in SAS data sets and SAS catalog entries. Spatial data may be available from some vendors in this native SAS/GIS format, but any spatial data that are not in this form must be imported before they can be used with SAS/GIS software. SAS/GIS software provides interactive facilities for importing spatial data from the following formats:

Uncompressed ARC/INFO transport files (E00)
Produced by ARC/INFO software from Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI)
Digital Line Graph files (DLG)
From the U.S. Geological Survey and commercial data vendors
Drawing Interchange File (DXF)
Produced by a variety of mapping and CAD software packages
Dynamap files
From Geographic Data Technology, Inc. (GDT)
SAS/GRAPH map data sets
Provided with SAS/GRAPH software
Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing files (TIGER)
From the U.S. Census Bureau and commercial data vendors
MapInfo files (MIF and MID)
From MapInfo Corporation.

SAS/GIS software also supports a generic format to accommodate other sources of spatial data for which no explicit importing facility is provided. You can use SAS DATA steps to translate your spatial data into the generic format and then use SAS/GIS software to complete the process of importing it into a SAS/GIS spatial database. See Importing Generic Spatial Data for more information on the generic import types.

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