21 Constraints to Consider as a SAS App Developer
SAS is a powerful platform - but if you’re building apps on it, the real world has a habit of introducing constraints you didn’t plan for. Here’s a short list, earned the hard way across many project deliveries, to consider before you write a single line of code:
- SAS runs on both Windows and Linux - so always use ”/” in filepaths
- The SAS 9 url may not be /SASStoredProcess/do (it could be do3)
- Encoding in SAS 9 in Europe is frequently WLATIN(X) not UTF-8
- PROC JSON doesn’t handle invalid chars or special missings
- There are three primary flavours of SAS - Viya, EBI, Base
- Editing .html in Studio can affect the headers - use JES
- The OS library in LUA is disabled in Viya 4 but not 3.5
- Avoid in-line and external JS/CSS to meet strict CSP
- Accessibility considerations / Lighthouse scores
- endsas can kill the entire STP server in 9.4m3
- Invisible characters embedded in .sas programs
- The SAS 9 home directory might be read-only
- RunAsTask fixes Job performance in Viya
- Most large environments run -NOXCMD
- Lack of multibridge connections
- Options missing=” fun & games
- Many sites implement LOCKDOWN
- Breaking changes in Viya APIs
- Support for very old browsers
- How to prevent code injection
- Handling SASLogon with MFA
We can help
If you are embarking on a SAS App Development project, as a customer or SAS Partner, our team is available for support.
Not only do we have the bitter-sweet experience of many successful (and some not so successful) project deliveries, we can equip you with some serious dev tooling. All of which is MIT open source and free for commercial use:
- SASjs Skills - Agent skills for SAS & SASjs
- SASjs Lint - Quality check your SAS code
- SASjs Core - Macros for all flavours of SAS
- SASjs CLI - DevOps, Documentation & Testing
- SASjs Adapter - JS connectivity library
- SASjs Server - Build Apps on Base SAS
Plus multiple Seed Apps to quick start your development journey.
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