I recently learned that, using SAS Share, you can ODBC SAS datasets directly from Unix. While this module seems a bit pricey it must be cheaper than maintaining an RDBMS if your primary purpose in maintaining the DB is connectivity across platforms(I hope there aren't too many people doing that). If you already maintain an RDBMS you might find that SAS Access and the ODBC drivers for that database are a better deal and may functionally perform better due to the greater selection of data types in most Databases. One example that was particularly apparent in this regard was dates. Sybase passed them through to Windows, but when we stored the dates as a SAS date, Sybase only saw an integer, and we had to translate them to, say, Excel dates. That's not difficult, but it is annoying.

I only found out about this direct connectivity about 2 months ago. After having used SAS in a distributed environment for four years I was surprised that I had not heard about it sooner. SI needs some more marketing in this area, particularly if they intend to become the warehouse environment rather than just a tool to analyze it.

I have not used the direct ODBC from SAS yet, so I cannot say how well it works. Since I will, most likely, have moved to a new contract before it is installed at PM Squared, I would really like to hear from people who have used the direct connectivity and their experiences.

Mark

------------------------------------- Name: Mark Covello Actuarial Programmer PM ** 2 250 Montgomery St., Suite 810 San Francisco, CA 94104 (415)283-2434 E-mail: covello@sirius.com Date: 05/08/96 Time: 08:09:16

The opinions above do not necessarily express the views of PM Squared, Inc.

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This message was sent by Chameleon ------------------------------------- On Tue, 7 May 1996 16:59:28 -0700 Thom Kerr wrote:

>Hi-- > >Is SAS 6.09, as implemented for Unix, ODBC compliant? >A cursory look through online resources seems to indicate >the the Windows implementation is, but from what I have >looked at it is not clear whether the SAS implementation >is. > >Pardon the nubie-oriented question (we've only recently >brought SAS to campus and it is on our list of "so-called" >unsupported software). > > > >-- >Thom Kerr >Manager of Academic Applications >Academic Computing and Information Technology >Claremont Graduate School >E-mail: thom@cgs.edu >Telephone (909) 607-3732 >