SAS Companion for the Microsoft Windows Environment

Using the SAS ODBC Driver to Access SAS Data from Other Applications

The SAS ODBC driver is an implementation of the open database connectivity (ODBC) standard that enables you to access, manipulate, and update SAS data sources. These data sources can include SAS data sets, flat files, VSAM files, as well as data from any database management system (DBMS) for which you have licensed SAS/ACCESS software. For information about how to access data from other Windows applications that comply with the ODBC standard, see the SAS online Help.

The SAS ODBC Driver accesses data by communicating with either a local or remote (SAS/SHARE) SAS server session using the TCP/IP protocol. The TCP/IP protocol enables users to access remote SAS servers on a variety of host platforms. A SAS server is a SAS procedure (either PROC SERVER or PROC ODBCSERV) that runs in its own SAS session; it accepts input and output requests from other SAS sessions and from the SAS ODBC driver on behalf of the ODBC-compliant application. For remote access to SAS data, a SAS server must be installed on the server machine, but not on the client machine.

The SAS ODBC Driver is included with base SAS. Remote server configurations that use the SAS ODBC driver require that these SAS products be installed:

Base SAS
SAS/SHARE
SAS/SHARE*NET

For details about installing and configuring the SAS ODBC Driver, see the installation documentation for the SAS System under Windows. For more information on configuring and using the SAS ODBC Driver, see SAS ODBC Driver User's Guide and Programmer's Reference.

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