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The SAS Data Sets ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from SAS Data Sets, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access SAS Data Sets data like you would a database - read, write, and update through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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Import Real-Time SAS Data Sets Data in ColdFusion to Build Applications


Use CData ODBC drivers to import and use SAS Data Sets data in ColdFusion.

Adobe ColdFusion is a web and mobile application development platform. It uses its own scripting language, ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML), to create data-driven websites as well as generate remote services, such as REST. When ColdFusion is paired with the CData ODBC Driver for SAS Data Sets, you can link your ColdFusion web and mobile applications to operational SAS Data Sets data. This allows for your applications to be more robust and complete. This article details how to use the ODBC driver to create a table populated with SAS Data Sets data from within a ColdFusion markup file.

To follow along with this tutorial, you need to install the CData ODBC Driver for SAS Data Sets and Adobe ColdFusion.

Configuring the Connection

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (Data Source Name). This is the last step of the driver installation process. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Set the following connection properties to connect to your SAS DataSet files:

Connecting to Local Files

  • Set the Connection Type to "Local." Local files support SELECT, INSERT, and DELETE commands.
  • Set the URI to a folder containing SAS files, e.g. C:\PATH\TO\FOLDER\.

Connecting to Cloud-Hosted SAS DataSet Files

While the driver is capable of pulling data from SAS DataSet files hosted on a variety of cloud data stores, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE are not supported outside of local files in this driver.

Set the Connection Type to the service hosting your SAS DataSet files. A unique prefix at the beginning of the URI connection property is used to identify the cloud data store and the remainder of the path is a relative path to the desired folder (one table per file) or single file (a single table). For more information, refer to the Getting Started section of the Help documentation.

Adding a Data Source and Creating a Table

After creating a DSN, follow the steps below to add a new data source, test our connection to it, create a ColdFusion markup file, and, finally, import SAS Data Sets SAS Data Sets data and display it in a table in ColdFusion:

  1. From the ColdFusion administrator interface, choose Data & Services.
  2. Here, click "Add New Data Source". The data source name can be any name, provided it conforms to the ColdFusion variable naming conventions. For our ODBC driver, choose "ODBC Socket", then click the "Add" button.
  3. From the ODBC DSN Dropdown menu select CData SAS Data Sets Sys. Under the Advanced Settings section, leave the Connection String blank. Note that any properties specified in this input field will override the ones specified in the DSN Configuration.
  4. Now, test the connection by pressing the check mark to the left of the CDataSAS Data SetsODBC data source you just created. When the data source reports an "OK" status, it is ready for use.
  5. Next, create a new ColdFusion Markup file (.cfm) and place it in the wwwroot directory ("C:\ColdFusion2021\cfusion\wwwroot") for ColdFusion.

    The following code queries the data source: 

                
        <cfquery name="SAS Data SetsQuery" dataSource="CDataSAS Data SetsODBC"> 
          SELECT * FROM restaurants 
        </cfquery>
    And a CFTable can be used to quickly output the table in HTML: 
                
          <cftable  
          query = "SAS Data SetsQuery" 
          border = "1" 
          colHeaders 
          colSpacing = "2" 
          headerLines = "2" 
          HTMLTable 
          maxRows = "500" 
          startRow = "1"> 

          <cfcol header="<b>name</b>" align="Left" width=2 text="name"/> 

          <cfcol header="<b>borough</b>" align="Left" width=15 text="borough"/> 

          ...

        </cftable>
    Full code, including the HTML portion is available below: 
                
        <html> 
        <head><title>CData Software | SAS Data Sets restaurants Table Demo </title></head> 
        <body> 
        <cfoutput>#ucase("SAS Data Sets restaurants Table Demo")#</cfoutput> 
        <cfquery name="SAS Data SetsQuery" dataSource="CDataSAS Data SetsODBC"> 

          SELECT * FROM restaurants 

        </cfquery> 
        <cftable  
          query = "SAS Data SetsQuery" 
          border = "1" 
          colHeaders 
          colSpacing = "2" 
          headerLines = "2" 
          HTMLTable 
          maxRows = "500" 
          startRow = "1"> 
          <cfcol header="<b>name</b>" align="Left" width=2 text="name"/> 

          <cfcol header="<b>borough</b>" align="Left" width=15 text="borough"/> 

          ...

        </cftable> 
        </body> 

        </html>
  6. Finally, run the code in a browser. It produces a table populated with SAS Data Sets data!

As a note, the CData ODBC Drivers also support parameterized queries using the cfqueryparam element. For example: SELECT * FROM Account WHERE name =

Get Started Today

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData ODBC Driver for SAS Data Sets and start building SAS Data Sets-connected applications with Adobe ColdFusion. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.