SASACCESS Views

SAS/ACCESS Views

A SAS/ACCESS view is an interface view, also called a view descriptor , which accesses DBMS data that is defined in a corresponding access descriptor .

Using SAS/ACCESS software, you can create an access descriptor and one or more view descriptors in order to define and access some or all of the data described by one DBMS table or DBMS view. You can also use view descriptors in order to update DBMS data, with certain restrictions.

In addition, some SAS/ACCESS products provide a dynamic LIBNAME engine interface. If available, it is recommended that you use SAS/ACCESS LIBNAME statement to assign a SAS libref to your DBMS data because it is more efficient and easier to use than access descriptors and view descriptors. The SAS/ACCESS dynamic LIBNAME engine enables you to treat DBMS data as if it were SAS data by assigning a SAS libref to DBMS objects. This means that you can use both native DATA step views and native PROC SQL views to access DBMS data instead of view descriptors.

See Chapter 33, "About SAS/ACCESS Software," on page 573 or the SAS/ACCESS documentation for your database for more information about SAS/ACCESS features.

For information on using SAS/ACCESS view descriptors created in an earlier release, see Chapter 35, "SAS 9.1 Compatibility with SAS Files From Earlier Releases," on page 587.

Note  

Starting in SAS 9, PROC SQL views are the preferred way to access relational DBMS data. You can convert existing SAS/ACCESS view descriptors into PROC SQL views by using the CV2VIEW procedure, enabling you to use the LIBNAME statement to access your data. See the CV2VIEW Procedure in SAS/ACCESS for Relational Databases: Reference .