LibGuides: Data Analysis--Quantitative: SAS

Accessing SAS

Don't know how to access SAS 9.4 at UNCW? You can

request an installation of the software on a computer, or
access via Horizon, UNCW's software cloud access point.

Learning SAS

Students and teachers can utilize SAS's free academic software to support teaching and learning with SAS. See below links for an overview of its features, and drop by the library's Statistical Collaboration and Training Center (SCTC) if you need help.

Kent State Tutorial to SAS
Step-by-step guide to using SAS from Kent State University Library.
SAS Documentation Help
This is SAS's written documentation about how to use its software. If you're specifically looking for documentation guidance for the downloadable SAS software available at UNCW, make sure you are in the section for "SAS Programming: SAS 9.4"
SAS Skill Builder for Students
Access a repository of resources to help you learn SAS.
Accessibility in SAS
This playlist of videos on SAS's Youtube channel shares webinars guiding how to incorporate accessibility into your SAS workflow.

"Students" (UNCW-affiliated people) can get access to free cloud-based software:

SAS OnDemand for Academics
-Quickly launch a browser-based programming environment using SAS Studio.
-Learn SAS programming from basic to advanced techniques using coding or point-and-click tasks.
-Sharpen your analytical skills in data preparation, descriptive analyses and advanced statistical methods.
SAS Viya for Learners
-Use an integrated suite of interactive visual interfaces for learning data science.
-Build proficiency in AI, text analytics and machine learning modeling on a computing environment built to analyze big data.
-Access a preconfigured JupyterLab interface for R and Python integration with SAS.
more...less...
You must first create a free profile
SAS Viya Workbench for Learners
-Effortlessly launch cloud resources featuring 2 cores of dedicated compute and 10 GB of storage, expanding your capacity for problem solving.
-Develop AI and machine learning models in your preferred programming language.
-Collaborate effortlessly with peers using GitHub integration.

In addition to utilizing the Skill Builder section for learning SAS, teachers can use an "Educator's Portal" to access teaching kits (datasets, course notes, and slide decks) and classroom activities.

SAS Educator Portal
Prepare your students for success with free resources.

SAS Workshops at UNCW

SAS Tools and Training workshop--3/27/2025
Did you know that as a faculty member or student you have access to a variety of SAS tools for data management, analysis techniques, visualization, and reporting for free? Plus, many of these solutions do not require you to know how to code. If you do want to code, you can code in SAS, Python, and R (and more!). Watch the recording to learn more.

Using SAS

WRDS data
Retrieve information from a wide variety of financial, economic, and marketing data sources using the WRDS database and import or export datasets into SAS.
ICPSR data
We distribute two SAS data formats: SAS transport files generated by the SAS CPORT procedure and SAS transport files written by the SAS XPORT engine. Both types of files contain specially formatted SAS data sets, which contain variable labels as well as data. Many of ICPSR's SAS CPORT files also include SAS format catalogs with value labels. SAS CPORT files should be imported into SAS with the SAS CIMPORT procedure. Since SAS has an engine that reads SAS XPORT files, they can be read by any SAS command that can read an ordinary SAS data set, such as the SAS set statement or the SAS FREQ procedure. SAS XPORT files can also be converted to standard SAS data sets with the SAS COPY procedure.
SAS File Types
Nearly any format of data file can be read into SAS. SAS can import various types of data, Excel files, CSV files, even DBF files. This page describes the different file types produced via SAS.
Preserving/sharing SAS data
SAS can import and export nearly any data format, but other software packages can barely read SAS codes or SAS data files (.sas, .sas7bdat, etc.) directly. This guide will describe how to store and share SAS data such as via a data repository.