How to pipe SAS Data Sets Data to CSV in PowerShell

The CData Cmdlets Module for SAS Data Sets is a standard PowerShell module offering straightforward integration with SAS Data Sets. Below, you will find examples of using our SASDataSets Cmdlets with native PowerShell cmdlets.

Creating a Connection to Your SAS Data Sets Data

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.

$conn = Connect-SASDataSets  -URI "$URI"

Selecting Data

Follow the steps below to retrieve data from the restaurants table and pipe the result into to a CSV file:

Select-SASDataSets -Connection $conn -Table restaurants | Select -Property * -ExcludeProperty Connection,Table,Columns | Export-Csv -Path c:\myrestaurantsData.csv -NoTypeInformation

You will notice that we piped the results from Select-SASDataSets into a Select-Object cmdlet and excluded some properties before piping them into an Export-Csv cmdlet. We do this because the CData Cmdlets append Connection, Table, and Columns information onto each "row" in the result set, and we do not necessarily want that information in our CSV file.

Deleting Data

The following line deletes any records that match the criteria:

Select-SASDataSets -Connection $conn -Table restaurants -Where "cuisine = American" | Remove-SASDataSets

Inserting and Updating Data

The cmdlets make data transformation easy as well as data cleansing. The following example loads data from a CSV file into SAS Data Sets, checking first whether a record already exists and needs to be updated instead of inserted.

Import-Csv -Path C:\MyrestaurantsUpdates.csv | %{
  $record = Select-SASDataSets -Connection $SASDataSets -Table restaurants -Where ("Id = `'"+$_.Id+"`'")
  if($record){
    Update-SASDataSets -Connection $sasdatasets -Table restaurants -Columns ("name","borough") -Values ($_.name, $_.borough) -Where ("Id = `'"+$_.Id+"`'")
  }else{
    Add-SASDataSets -Connection $sasdatasets -Table restaurants -Columns ("name","borough") -Values ($_.name, $_.borough)
  }
}

As always, our goal is to simplify the way you connect to data. With cmdlets users can install a data module, set the connection properties, and start building. Download Cmdlets and start working with your data in PowerShell today!