SAS Data Sets

SAS data sets (tables) are the default SAS storage format. You can use them to store data of any granularity. A SAS table is a SAS file stored in a SAS library that SAS creates and processes. A SAS table contains data values that are organized as a table of observations (rows) and variables (columns) that can be processed by SAS software. A SAS table also contains descriptor information such as the data types and lengths of the columns, as well as which engine was used to create the data. For more information about using default SAS storage, see SAS Language Reference: Concepts and SAS Data Set Options: Reference. The following figure shows how connectivity to SAS data sets is configured.

For a detailed example of a SAS data set connection, see Establishing Connectivity to a Library of SAS Data Sets.