Natively Connect to SAS Data Sets Data in PHP

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for SAS Data Sets into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build SAS Data Sets-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to SAS Data Sets data, execute queries, and output the results.

Configure a DSN

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. 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.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to SAS Data Sets by calling the or methods. To close connections, use or .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC SASDataSets Source","user","password");

Connections opened with are closed when the script ends. Connections opened with the method are still open after the script ends. This enables other scripts to share that connection when they connect with the same credentials. By sharing connections among your scripts, you can save system resources, and queries execute faster.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC SASDataSets Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($conn); //persistent connection must be closed explicitly

Create Prepared Statements

Create prepared statements and parameterized queries with the function.

$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM restaurants WHERE cuisine = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC SASDataSets Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM restaurants WHERE cuisine = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('American'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC SASDataSets Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT name, borough FROM restaurants WHERE cuisine = 'American'");
 

Process Results

Access a row in the result set as an array with the function.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC SAS Data Sets data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT name, borough FROM restaurants WHERE cuisine = 'American'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["name"] . "\n";
}

Display the result set in an HTML table with the function.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC SAS Data Sets data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM restaurants WHERE cuisine = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('American'));
if($success)
 odbc_result_all($query);

More Example Queries

You will find complete information on the driver's supported SQL in the help documentation. The code examples above are SAS Data Sets-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.