The SAS Reader/Writer allows FME to read and write files in the SAS format.
The SAS format is supported through an external statistics application Stat/Transfer made by CircleSys. Usage of this format requires that Stat/Transfer be installed and licensed. Please visit www.stattransfer.com for information about obtaining and licensing this software.
Overview
SAS files contain statistical data and may be in the form of any of several versions, including SAS versions six through nine, CPORT, Transport, and a program plus an ASCII data file. A SAS dataset for versions six through nine are stored as a set of observations, each observation becoming an FME feature and all of them of the same feature type. SAS CPORT and Transport datasets contain members that will each map to a different feature type, and each in turn store observations that become features.
Each observation in a SAS dataset contains variables that become FME feature attributes. Values may also be associated with zero or more value labels, which are not currently supported by FME.
There is no geometry or dimension to the features created from the SAS files. Therefore, none of the features read from SAS are directly viewable.
By convention, SAS version 6 files use the .sd, .sd2, or .ssd filename extension; versions 7 and higher use .sas7 or .sas7bdat; CPORT uses .stc; Transport uses .xpt, .tpt, .stx; and the program plus ASCII data file uses .sas.
However, the SAS reader can use any extension, and will default to processing the file as being in version 6. The writer, by default, uses the version 7 .sas7bdat extension.
Reader Overview
The SAS reader module produces an FME feature for each observation (record) in the input SAS file. The feature’s attributes will be the names of the variables in the dataset or member.
Writer Overview
The SAS writer writes all attributes of a feature to a SAS file. It is a folder writer, so features of different types are written to different SAS files.