Introduction to Data Transfer Services

Data Transfer Services offers the best solution for the transfer of SAS data and external files between a SAS/CONNECT client and a server.

Data Transfer Services is most useful for data exchanges between a client and a server that run different operating environments on incompatible computer architectures (for example, z/OS and Windows) or different SAS software releases (for example, SAS 8 and SAS 9). Data Transfer Services automatically translates the internal representations of character and numeric data between the client and the server computers.

Note: The translation algorithm was changed between SAS 6 and SAS 8 and later releases of SAS. See File Format Translation Algorithms.

You implement Data Transfer Services by using the UPLOAD and DOWNLOAD procedures. Before Data Transfer Services can be deployed, a client session must be connected to a server session (for example, by using the SIGNON statement).