[Info-vax] SAS software for VAX/VMS

[Louis Krupp]

On 11/4/2020 1:13 AM, Gregory Reut wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Looking for an advice from VMS experts.
>
> I need to read a bunch of SAS v5 data files which came from a VAX. (These are clinical research data from the end of 80ies.) As far as I understand, I would need either SAS software v5 for VAX/VMS, of SAS v8 with v5 engine engine to read those files:
> https://v8doc.sas.com/sashtml/vms/z0248600.htm
> SAS themselves couldn't help with either VAX/VMS version or with v5 engine.
>
> Hence two questions:
> - would anybody have by any chance v5 software or engine?
> - perhpas there is another/better way to read the data?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Greg

Someone in a SAS users group might have whatever you need, including a 
contact within SAS who would be willing to help you. If you're a current 
SAS user, that should help.

Back in the early 80s, I wanted something that would run on a VAX/VMS 
system and read a bunch of SPSS system files that had been created on a 
Burroughs B6800. I had a contact within SPSS whom I'd met at a Burroughs 
users' conference; I signed a nondisclosure agreement, SPSS sent me at 
least part of the source of whatever version of SPSS had created the 
files, and I wrote a FORTRAN program that would read the Burroughs files 
and create export files (or whatever SPSS called them) that could then 
be imported by SPSS on VAX/VMS.

As I recall, creating export files on the Burroughs wasn't an option, 
because its (somewhat older) version of SPSS didn't have that feature. 
The only alternative for saving all that data would have been formatting 
and creating flat files and transcribing variable names and so on and it 
would have been a lot of work for a lot of users.

Good luck.

Louis