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Project Members:

• Andreas Mangold (admin)
• Andreas Menrath (admin)

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Cmdlets4Sas is supported by

[Andreas Menrath]

• Overview
• Intention
• Features
• Overview Cmdlets
• Installation
• Samples

Overview

The Cmdlets4Sas (speak: Commandlets for SAS) are custom commandlets which enhance your powershell runtime with easy and seamless access to the analytical power of the SAS (R) platform.
For some inspiration of what you can accomplish with powershell by using the SAS IT Client you may take a look at the blog of Chris Hemedinger (The SAS Dummy) at http://blogs.sas.com/content/sasdummy/tag/powershell/
The commandlets abstract some of the functionality presented at the SAS Dummy blog, so that you can have the same results by writing less code.

Intention

The Cmdlets4Sas are designed to abstract the SAS IOM interfaces and make the access to the SAS Platform as easy as possible.
Therefore the user does not have to know the implementation details of the SAS interfaces.
Typically the end user wants to use the IOM interfaces to fullfill a more abstract task (like reading the SAS log or transferring a file) and does not want to programm the low level to the COM objects
(which may require the user to write loops, cast data types, add error handling, knowing the different versions of the interfaces, how to use the SAS Object Keeper in combination with OleDb, ...).

So the intention of these cmdlets is to hide all the implementation details and encapsulate them in a few and easy to use tasks.
This creates a new user experience and dramatically reduces the required lines of code in your PowerShell scripts.
The intended audience for the cmdlets are:

• SAS powerusers: scripting of SAS code execution and file transfer like in Enterprise Guide
• SAS platform administrators: automation of reoccuring SAS tasks (like creating SAS formats, creating reports from audit tables). These tasks can be run interactively or scheduled in your favorite windows scheduler.
• Testers: scripting of SAS code execution for your test cases with the ability to scan the SAS log for specific messages, download and compare data or check the content of macro variables. The commandlets enable you to build your own testing framework.

For a list of some intended use cases see: [Use Cases]

Features

• Seamless access to one or multiple SAS server sessions inside your powershell environment.
• The commandlets also expose the raw SAS IOM COM objects. This enables you to extend to the full power of SAS IOM by writing your own custom code.
• Commandlets are fully documented (with samples) inside the PowerShell runtime. Just write Get-Help <Name of the Commandlet> as a powershell command and review the Output. You can also read a copy of the documentation in the project wiki.
• Commandlets are fully compatible with 32bit and 64bit processes
• Commandlets will also work with older SAS servers running SAS 9.1 or above
• since version 0.2 all commandlets are also supported in PowerShell 2.0
• Security
  • all Connect-SasXXXServer commandlets will enforce encryption unless you explicitly disable encryption in the server URI.
  • SAS Token Authentication is supported since version 0.2
• Convenience: all Connect-SasXXXServer commandlets will use the SAS default ports and the default CLSID for the server type if you omit that information in the URI
• Quality control: all commandlets are tested with more than 60 automated tests

Overview Cmdlets

• [Connect-SasWorkspaceLocal] : Connect to the local SAS server
• [Connect-SasWorkspaceServer] : Connect to a remote SAS workspace server
• [Connect-SasPooledWorkspaceServer] : Connect to a remote SAS pooled workspace server
• [Connect-SasStpServer] : Connect to a remote SAS stored process server workspace
• [Connect-SasMetadataServer] : Connect to a remote SAS metadata server
• [Copy-SasWorkspace] : Create a copy of an existing SAS Workspace
• [Disconnect-SasServer] : Disconnects your SAS server session and frees resources
• [Get-SasMetaToken] : Requests a token (credentials for one time use) from a SAS metadata server
• [Invoke-SasCode] : Executes the code in the specified SAS workspace server session
• [Invoke-SasSql] : Executes the SQL command in the specified SAS workspace server session.
• [Invoke-SasPipe] : Executes the operating system command in the specified SAS workspace server session.
• [Read-SasLog] : Gets the content of the SAS log
• [Read-SasOdsListing] : Gets the content of the SAS ODS listing.
• [Read-SasFile] : Transfers a file from a remote SAS workspace to your local file system.
• [Write-SasFile] : Transfers a file from your local file system to a remote SAS workspace.
• [Read-SasData] : Reads data from a SAS dataset or SAS SQL query and returns all datarows.
• [Get-SasOleDbConnection] : Gets a OleDb database connection to a local or remote SAS workspace.
• [Get-SasFileInfo] : Gets a SasFileInfo object containing information about a remote file (size, modification date, ...)
• [Get-SasLocalProfiles] : Returns local SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Addin for Microsoft Office profiles
• [Get-SasServerDefinitions] : Gets a SASObjectManager.ServerDef object for all servers known to the SAS Metadata server (and visible to the user)
• [Get-SasFiles] : Retrieve information about the file system of a SAS Workspace
• [Get-SasFileRef] : Gets a SasFileRef object from a SAS workspace.
• [Invoke-SasAsync] : Run powershell commandlets as an asynchronous task
• [Wait-SasAsyncComplete] : Wait for asynchronous task to complete
• [Get-SasAsyncResult] : Fetches the results or errors from an asynchronous task
• [Read-SasMacroVariable] : Gets the content of a SAS macro variable.
• [Read-SasMetaRepositoriesXml] : Returns a XML item list with all SAS Metadata Repositories

Installation

See page [Installation and Troubleshooting]

Samples

See page [Samples]