SAS Companion for the OpenVMS Operating Environment

Using SAS with the Windowing Environment

The SAS windowing environment is an interactive windowing environment for editing, running, and viewing SAS System source code and output.

In Version 8 of the SAS System under OpenVMS, the SAS windowing environment interface is available on any display device that uses the Motif interface.

Invoking SAS with the Windowing Environment Interface

If you have the hardware and software to run the Motif interface, you can use any of the following methods to invoke a SAS process with the SAS windowing environment interface:

SAS command plus any appropriate system options
Applications menu of the Motif Session Manager
command procedure (.COM) file.

Invoking SAS in the windowing environment mode opens the three programming windows: Program Editor, Log, and List.

Invoking SAS with the SAS Command

The SAS windowing environment is the default for running SAS under OpenVMS. Therefore, to invoke SAS all you need to do is enter the SAS command (or whatever command your site has chosen) at the DCL prompt:

$ SAS8

If the SAS windowing environment is not the default, then use the SAS windowing environment system option to specify the SAS windowing environment interface:

$ SAS8/DMS

As explained in Starting a SAS Session, you can also specify other system options when you invoke SAS in this manner.

To specify a display node, use the SET DISPLAY DCL command. For example, if you want to invoke SAS with the SAS windowing environment interface and to display the windows on node MYNODE running TCP/IP transport protocol, type the following:

$ SET DISPLAY/CREATE/NODE=MYNODE/TRANS=TCPIP
$ SAS8/DMS

For more information about the SET DISPLAY DCL command, see the OpenVMS online help and OpenVMS User's Manual.

Invoking SAS from Motif Session Manager

You can also invoke SAS with the SAS windowing environment interface from the Applications menu of the Motif Session Manager. To add SAS to the Applications menu (if it is not already there), perform the following steps:

From the Options menu, select Menus.
Select Applications from the Menu Names list.
Enter a menu item name, such as MySAS, and define SAS8/DMS (along with the appropriate command-line qualifiers) as the DCL command.
Add the menu definition to the Item Names list by clicking on the up arrow.
Add the new item name to the existing list of applications by clicking on the left arrow.
Click on [Apply] and then click on [Cancel] in the Menus dialog window.
Select your menu command from the Applications menu to invoke the SAS System.

For more information about Motif Session Manager, see the documentation for your Motif interface.

Invoking SAS from a Command Procedure File

To invoke SAS with the SAS windowing environment interface from a command procedure (.COM) file, place the following commands in the .COM file:

$ DEASSIGN SYS$INPUT
$ SAS8/DMS

The DEASSIGN command prevents OpenVMS from looking for program input in the location defined by the SYS$INPUT logical name, and it enables SAS to be initialized with the SAS windowing environment interface.

If the .COM file is named MYSAS.COM, then you would execute the file as follows:

$ @MYSAS

For more information about command procedure files, see Command Procedures and OpenVMS User's Manual.

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