What's New in Base SAS 9.4 Version

Two New Languages

• DS2 is a SAS proprietary programming language that is suitable for advanced data manipulation and applications. It also includes additional data types, ANSI SQL types, programming structure elements, and user-defined methods and packages. The DS2 procedure facilitates you to suggest DS2 language statements from a Base SAS session. In the first preservation release for SAS 9.4, five new DS2 configurations and run-time loggers have been extra to the SAS Logging Facility.
• In the second maintenance release for SAS 9.4, the SAS In-Database Code Accelerator for Hadoop runs the DS2 data program as well as the thread program within the database. More than a few new functions have been added. The HTTP package make possible you to construct an HTTP client to access web services and a new logger enables logging of HTTP traffic. A link string parameter is available when instantiating an SQLSTMT package.

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• SAS FedSQL is a SAS proprietary implementation of the ANSI SQL: 1999 core standard. It provides support for new data types and other ANSI 1999 core compliance features and proprietary extensions. FedSQL provides data access technology that brings a scalable, threaded, high-performance method to access, manage, and share relational data in several data sources. FedSQL is a vendor-neutral SQL dialect that accesses data from various data sources without submitting queries in the SQL dialect that is specific to the data source. In addition, a single FedSQL query can objective data in several data sources and come back a single result table. The FEDSQL procedure enables you to submit FedSQL language statements from a Base SAS session. The first maintenance release for SAS 9.4 adds hold up for Memory Data Store (MDS), SAP HANA, and SASHDAT data sources.
• In the second maintenance release for SAS 9.4, SAS FedSQL supports Hive, HDMD, and PostgreSQL data sources. Data types can be rehabilitated to another data type. You can add DBMS-specific clauses to the end of the CREATE INDEX statement, and you can write a SASHDAT file in solid format.
• In the third upholding release of SAS 9.4, FedSQL has added support for HAWQ and Impala distributions of Hadoop, improved support for Impala, new data types, and more.

Hadoop Support
The first maintenance release for SAS 9.4 enables you to use the SPD Engine to read, write, and update data in a Hadoop come together through the HDFS. In addition, you can now use the HADOOP process to submit configuration properties to the Hadoop server.
In the second maintenance release for SAS 9.4, performance has been improved for the SPD Engine access to Hadoop. The SAS Hadoop Configuration Guide for Base SAS and SAS/ACCESS is available from the support.sas.com third-party site for Hadoop.
In the third maintenance release of SAS 9.4, access to data stored in HDFS is enhanced with a new distributed lock manager and therefore easier access to Hadoop clusters using Hadoop configuration files.
Execute the DATA Step in New Supported Environments
In the first maintenance release for SAS 9.4, the DATA step runs in In-memory in the SAS LASR Analytic Server and inside Hadoop using SAS/ACCESS and the SAS Embedded Process, with limits. Note that the DATA step processing in Hadoop is preproduction. For more information, see SAS LASR Analytic Server: Reference Guide and SAS In-Database Products: User's Guide.
In the second maintenance release for SAS 9.4, DATA step process in Hadoop is fully supported.
Improved Performance

• SAS can process large amounts of data more professionally by using new system options to align data and utility files on a page boundary and to set the page size for a SAS library to be the same size as a RAID stripe.
• Optimization processes that decide page size and the default size of a logical record length have been enhanced.
• In the second maintenance release for SAS 9.4, the SPD Engine enables you to specify the size of a block of observations to be used in an I/O operation.
• The Scalable Performance Data Engine (SPD Engine) enables the caching of opened SPD Engine files.

Output Delivery System

• New ODS destinations are EPUB, EPUB3, HTML5, and the ODS destination for PowerPoint.
• In the first maintenance release for SAS 9.4, you can apply cascading style sheets (CSS) to many types of ODS output.
• The Output Delivery System (ODS) Report Writing Interface (RWI) enables you to create and manipulate predefined ODS objects in a DATA step to create highly customized output.
• In the first maintenance release for SAS 9.4, the ODS EPUB3 statement supports HTML5, CSS2, CSS3, SVG, and user-specified audio and video. Any e-book reader that supports EPUB3 supports ODS EPUB3 audio and video.
• The ODS LAYOUT statement enables you to specify the exact location on the page to place a layout and region container.
• The default style for all Printer family destinations (PS, PDF, PCL) has changed from Styles.Printer to Styles.Pearl.
• The default HTML style for z/OS has changed from Styles.Default to Styles.Htmlblue.
• There are three new ODS Graphics style attributes: DATASKIN, FILLPATTERN=, and KPISKIN.
• There are three new ODS procedures: PROC ODSLIST, PROC ODSTABLE, and PROC ODSTEXT.
• There are four new ODS statements: ODS POWERPOINT, ODS EPUB, ODS LAYOUT, and ODS HTML5.

The second maintenance release for SAS 9.4 has these enhancements:

• The statements ODS EPUB, ODS EPUB3, and ODS ESCAPECHAR support these functions to format data: BOLD, EMPHASIS, ITALIC, PDF, and STRONG.
• The ODS HTML5 statement supports options to show graph styles in the output and to turn off the default CSS style information.
• Several ODS tagsets have been deprecated.
• The Output Delivery System: User's Guide as been dividen into three publications:
• SAS Output Delivery System: User's Guide
• SAS Output Delivery System: Procedure's Guide
• SAS Output Delivery System: Advanced Topics

Enhanced ODS Graphics

• The ODS Graphics suite of products includes the Graph Template Language, ODS Graphics procedures, ODS Graphics Designer, and ODS Graphics Editor.
• The ODS Graphics products provide several new plot types, including axis tables that create an axis-aligned row or column of textual data.
• A new sub-pixel rendering feature provides smoother curves for line charts and more consistent spacing in bar charts.
• Numerous plot layout, panel, and axis options have been added to control and enhance the output of your graphs. For example, you can now customize the appearance attributes for group values without changing the ODS style template. You can also now specify a color-priority rotation pattern for cycling graph data attributes.
• The ODS Graphics products provide more options for fitting or splitting data labels, curve labels, and axis tick values when there is not enough room to display the text normally. The data label positioning algorithm was improved to better position the data labels with their data markers. In addition, data markers can now be adjusted when multiple observations have the same response value.
• In the second maintenance release for SAS 9.4, the ODS Graphics procedures have a new text plot, a new gradient legend, and several new options. The Graph Template Language has a new text plot and several new and revised statement options.
• The ODS Graphics Designer introduces an Auto Charts feature that generates a variety of graphs automatically, based on your data.
• In the first maintenance release for SAS 9.4, ODS Graphics has new and revised plots, charts, and panels.

Increased Security

• SAS/SECURE is a product within the SAS System, and it is now included with Base SAS. A separate license for SAS/SECURE is no longer required. This change makes strong encryption available in all deployments (except where prohibited by import restrictions).
• SAS/SECURE increases data security by using the industry standard Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with 64-bit salt. See Encryption in SAS 9.4.
• The enhanced ENCRYPT= data set option now supports AES encryption. This enables you to use the AES algorithm for stronger encryption.
• Data sets in a metadata repository can be secured by placing them in a metadata-bound library. A metadata-bound library is a physical library that is tied to a corresponding metadata object.
• The first maintenance release for SAS 9.4 incorporates a new default location for the TLS Certificate Authority for UNIX and z/OS foundation servers, and support for Subject Alternative Names in TLS certificates on UNIX and z/OS clients and servers. Authorized users of metadata-bound libraries can access data without supplying the key-in code.
• In the second release for SAS 9.4 on UNIX and z/OS, SAS supports OpenSSL 1.0.1h, which provides support for SSL 3.0 and TLS version 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2. SSL 2.0 is not longer supported.
• In the third maintenance release of SAS 9.4, the SAS Deployment Wizard (SDW) automates the process of updating the TLS certificates on UNIX servers. TLS version 1.0. 1.1, and 1.2 are supported.

Procedures Enhancements

• The APPEND, COPY, and CONTENTS statements support AES encryption.
• The CONTENTS statement prints the International Components for Unicode (ICU) revision number.
• The DATASETS procedure supports extended attributes.
• The DELETE procedure enables you to delete SAS files from the disk or tape on which it is stored.
• The JSON procedure reads data from a SAS data set and writes the data to an external file in JSON representation.
• The MIGRATE procedure supports extended attributes.
• The OPTIONS procedure supports the new LISTOPTSAVE option which lists the system options that can be saved by using the OPTSAVE procedure or the DMOPTSAVE command.
• The PRINT procedure support the SUMLABEL= option and the GRANDTOTAL_LABEL= option enable you to specify labels for the BY group total and grand total values.
• The PROC PRINTTO PRINT= statement opens the LISTING destination. You no longer need to specify the ODS LISTING statement before you use the PRINTTO procedure.
• In-Database processing for PROC REPORT now supports the Aster, Greenplum, and HADOOP database management systems. Also, NOWINDOWS is now the default windowing environment for PROC REPORT.
• The XSL procedure now provides the PARAMETER statement to pass a parameter value to an XSL style sheet.
• In the first maintenance release for SAS 9.4, changes and enhancements to procedures enable you to determine the encoding of data sets in a transport file, transport data sets with timezone offsets, generate a one-time password from the metadata server to access the SAS Content Server, and support user identity authentication. A link and supporting text were added for Microsoft Excel functions.
• In the first maintenance release for SAS 9.4, an administrator can use the AUTHLIB procedure to require that all data sets in a metadata-bound library be automatically encrypted using the REQUIRE_ENCRYPTION=YES option in the CREATE or MODIFY statements.
• In the second release for SAS 9.4, the REPORT procedure supports several statistical keywords, the CIMPORT procedure can sort imported data sets according to the destination operating system collation sequence, and the FONTREG procedure enables you to specify directories to search for OpenType font files. The CPORT and CIMPORT procedures have been enhanced to support extended attributes.
• In the third maintenance release of SAS 9.4, the following procedures now support the Impala, HAWQ, and SAP HANA database management systems: DS2, FedSQL, MEANS, RANK, REPORT, SORT, SUMMARY, and TABULATE.
• In the third maintenance release of SAS 9.4, SAS data sets can be written to an external file in JSON representation. Now, you can create and parse JSON text using the DS2 JSON package. For more information, see Base SAS Procedures Guide.

Locked-Down State

• In the first maintenance release for Base SAS 9.4, if you are running in a client/server environment (for example, SAS Enterprise Guide), the SAS server administrator can create an environment where your SAS client has access to a set of directories and files. All other directories and files would be inaccessible. When SAS is in a locked-down state, access to several SAS language elements is restricted.
• In the second maintenance release for SAS 9.4, certain access methods and their related procedures are disabled, by default, when a SAS session is locked down. These access methods can be re-enabled by a SAS server adminisatrator. When SAS is in a locked down-down state, the SOAP procedure is not available.

New Automatic Macro Variables

• SYSDATASTEPPHASE ensures that the macro is being executed as part of the proper phase of a DATA step.
• SYSHOSTINFOLONG contains the operating environment information that is displayed when the HOSTINFOLONG option is specified.
• SYSPROCESSMODE contains the name of the current SAS session run mode or server type.
• SYSTIMEZONE contains the time zone name based on the current value of the TIMEZONE option.
• SYSTIMEZONEIDENT contains the time zone ID based on the current value of the TIMEZONE option.
• SYSTIMEZONEOFFSET contains the time zone offset based on the current value of the TIMEZONE option.

Other Enhancements

• You can create custom attributes for SAS data sets by using extended attributes.
• The default value of the EXTENDOBSCOUNTER= data set option has been changed to YES. You can also use the new EXTENDOBSCOUNTER= data set option to specify whether to extend the observation count for SAS data sets.
• The default value of the YEARCUTOFF= system option has been changed to 1926.
• The LIBNAME statement for the XMLV2 engine nickname supports the PREFIXATTRIBUTES= option.
• In the first maintenance release for SAS 9.4, you can enable SAS programs to send messages to and receive messages from an ActiveMQ message broker and any JMS API-compliant message service in the UNIX environment.
• In the first maintenance release for SAS 9.4, details have been added in support of Windows 32-bit architecture

National Language Support (NLS)

• SAS can now process data by using a time zone other than your local time zone. New time zone formats use the ISO 8601 standard to format dates, times, and datetime values by using Universal Coordinate Time (UTC).
• New time zone functions enable you to determine time zones and time zone offsets, and to convert datetime values between SAS and UTC.
• A new SAS datetime constant enables a SAS datetime value to have a time zone offset.