CC08 Logicals From Libraries: Using Storage as a Bridge Between Sessions     Contributed

Gary Schlegelmilch
U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census
Abstract: In converting legacy systems into SAS, or consolidating systems into an integrated whole, new techniques are often developed just to accommodate the transition. In a case where a UNIX application needed to communicate file locations from inside the Base SA S program back to the calling script file, we used the common factor - physical storage - as the common link. This allowed the parent process to retrieve values for variables that were defined in subprocesses, and normally inaccessible by the parent proces s. The technique uses several SAS functions, in common use in many SAS programs, to access the data from the calling process. The program then writes the library information to a UNIX script file, which can in turn be executed by the calling process to def ine the logicals at that level. Although this problem was solved for a UNIX platform; the technique used would lend itself to other platforms as well.

Biography:
Gary Schlegelmilch has been enthusiastically working in SAS for just under five years. His current position with the Census Bureau finds him developing software for various economic surveys, primarily using Base SAS, SAS/CONNECT, and Macros. His programmin g career spans four decades, and has used and informally taught several computer languages. He has presented both contributed and invited papers to local, regional, and international SAS conferences.