SAS System Features

Application Response Measurement (ARM)

Application Response Measurement (ARM) enables you to monitor the availability and performance of transactions within and across diverse applications. The SAS ARM interface consists of the implementation of the ARM API as ARM macros and an ARM agent. An ARM agent generates calls to the ARM macros. New ARM system options enable you to manage the ARM environment and to log internal SAS processing transactions. See 'Monitoring Performance Using Application Response Measurement (ARM)' in SAS Language Reference: Concepts , 'ARM Macros' on page xviii, and 'System Options' on page xix.

Cross-Environment Data Access (CEDA)

CEDA processes SAS files that were created on a different host. This is especially useful if you have upgraded from a 32-bit platform to a 64-bit platform. Messages in the SAS log notify you when CEDA is being used to process a SAS file. See 'Processing Data Using Cross-Environment Data Access (CEDA)' in SAS Language Reference: Concepts .

DATA Step Object Attributes and Methods

SAS now provides two predefined component objects for use in a DATA step: the hash object and the hash iterator object. These objects enable you to quickly and efficiently store, search, and retrieve data based on lookup keys.

The DATA step component object interface enables you to create and manipulate these component objects by using statements, attributes, and methods. You use the DATA step object dot notation to access the component object's attributes and methods.

The hash and hash iterator objects have one attribute, fourteen methods, and two statements associated with them. See Appendix 1, 'DATA Step Object Attributes and Methods,' on page 1633.

Engines

• The default BASE engine in SAS supports longer format and informat names , thread-enabled procedures such as the SORT and SUMMARY procedures, and more than 32,767 variables in a SAS data set.

• The metadata LIBNAME engine enables you to use metadata in order to access and augment data that is identified by the metadata. The metadata engine retrieves information about the target SAS data library from metadata objects in a specified SAS Metadata Repository on the SAS Metadata Server. The metadata engine provides a consistent method for accessing many data sources. That is, SAS provides different engines that have different options, behavior, and tuning requirements. By taking advantage of metadata, the necessary information that is required to access data can be created in one central location so that applications can use the metadata engine to access different sources of data, without having to understand the differences and details of each SAS engine. See the SAS Metadata LIBNAME Engine User 's Guide .

• The XML LIBNAME engine imports and exports a broader variety of XML documents. The XMLMAP= option specifies a separate XML document that contains specific XMLMap syntax. The Version 1.2 XMLMap syntax tells the XML engine how to interpret the XML markup in order to successfully import an XML document. See the SAS XML LIBNAME Engine User's Guide .

• The new SASEDOC LIBNAME engine enables you to bind output objects that persist in an ODS document. See the SAS Output Delivery System: User's Guide .

• The new character variable padding (CVP) engine expands character variable lengths, using a specified expansion amount, so that character data truncation does not occur when a file requires transcoding. Character data truncation can occur when the number of bytes for a character in one encoding is different from the number of bytes for the same character in another encoding, such as when a single-byte character set (SBCS) is transcoded to a double-byte character set (DBCS). See the SAS National Language Support (NLS): User's Guide .

Indexing

When creating an index that requires sorting, SAS attempts to sort the data by using the thread-enabled sort. By dividing the sorting task into separately executable processes, the time required to sort the data can be reduced. See the topic 'Creating an Index' in Understanding SAS Indexes in SAS Language Reference: Concepts .

Integrity Constraints

Variables in a SAS data file can now be part of both a primary key (general integrity constraint) and a foreign key (referential integrity constraint). However, there are restrictions when defining a primary key and a foreign key constraint that use the same variables. See the 'Overlapping Primary Key and Foreign Key Constraints' topic in Understanding Integrity Constraints in SAS Language Reference: Concepts .

Restricted System Options

System administrators can restrict system options from being modified by a user. You can use the RESTRICT option in the OPTIONS procedure to list the restricted options. The implementation of restricted options is specific to the operating environment. For details about how to restrict options, see the configuration guide for your operating environment. For information about listing restricted options, see the OPTIONS procedure in the Base SAS Procedures Guide .

SAS Utility Macro

The SAS utility macro, %DS2CSV, is available now in Base SAS. This macro converts SAS data sets to comma-separated value (CSV) files. Prior to SAS 9.1, this macro was available only for SAS/IntrNet users.

Universal Unique Identifiers

A Universal Unique Identifier (UUID) is a 128-bit identifier that consists of date and time information, and the IEEE node address of a host. UUIDs are useful when objects such as rows or other components of a SAS application must be uniquely identified. For more information, see 'Universal Unique Identifiers' in SAS Language Reference: Concepts .