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April 28, 2006
Integration of SAS data files into Spotfire DecisionSite
From version 8.2.1 Spotfire DecisionSite offers a seamless integration with SAS data files, in this and some upcoming articles I will describe some of the challenges we had to overcome to make this work.
The goal for the development of the SAS data file ntegration into Spotfire DecisionSite was:
- Make data from SAS data files (.SAS7BDAT) as easy to use in Spotfire DecisionSite as data from text files and excel files. It must be possible to open SAS files via File/Open, File/Import and drag and drop. It must also be possible to add new columns of data from SAS files
- Allow usage of SAS data files as targets for linked data in a Spotfire DecisionSite analysis
- Import SAS data in a format that is as similar as possible to the experience to how the data is presented in SAS
- The imported data should be useful for analysis in Spotfire DecisionSite, i.e. numerical data should still be numerical etc.
- No information should be lost during import
The technology platform that we choose for the integration is the local data provider, from the SAS Providers for OLE DB, which is available for free download from SAS. This OLE DB provider supports reading data from SAS data files, which are generated by SAS version 6 and newer.
More on type systems in the next article.
Regards,
Jonas
Posted by Jonas Lagerblad at April 28, 2006 3:45 PM
