Installing and configuring an SAS OLEDB-driver for MSSQL

To get the correct SAS OLEDB driver or newest SAS OLEDB driver. It is best to do a search e.g. on Google.
NB! You need an account at SAS to be able to download.

And even thou this guide for Installing and configuring an SAS OLEDB-driver for MSSQL is old – it is still very useful.

Be aware, that it is possible to code a program in e.g. .NET that reads a SAS-dataset. It can be done with the SasReader (currently in version 1.0.6).

Below code in C# reads a SAS-dataset and outputs it into a .CSV-file.
Credits to my colleague that figured this out.

using System;
using System.IO;
using SasReader;
using System.Text;

namespace SasToCsvConverter
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
           // Define paths
           // string sasFilePath = @"C:\temp\<YOUR SAS-DATASET>.sas7bdat";
           // string csvFilePath = @"C:\temp\output.csv";
            try
            {
                // Initialize SAS file reader
                using (FileStream sasToParseFileInputStream = File.OpenRead(sasFilePath))
                {
                    SasFileReader sasFileReader = new SasFileReaderImpl(sasToParseFileInputStream);

                    // Open the CSV file for writing
                    using (var writer = new StreamWriter(csvFilePath, false, Encoding.UTF8))
                    {
                        // Read and write META DATA
                        var sasMetaColumns = sasFileReader.getColumns();

                        // Write header
                        var headerNames = new StringBuilder();
                        foreach (var column in sasMetaColumns)
                        {
                            headerNames.Append(column.getName()).Append(",");
                        }

                        // Remove the trailing comma
                        writer.WriteLine(headerNames.ToString().TrimEnd(','));

                        // Write DATA
                        long rowCount = sasFileReader.getSasFileProperties().getRowCount();
                        for (int i = 0; i < rowCount; i++)
                        {
                            var row = sasFileReader.readNext(); // object[]
                            var rowValues = new StringBuilder();
                            foreach (var value in row)
                            {
                                var stringValue = value?.ToString() ?? string.Empty;
                                rowValues.Append(EscapeCsvValue(stringValue)).Append(",");
                            }

                            // Remove the trailing comma
                            writer.WriteLine(rowValues.ToString().TrimEnd(','));

                            // Optional: Log progress
                            Console.WriteLine($"Processed row {i + 1}/{rowCount}");
                        }
                    }
                }

                Console.WriteLine("Conversion to CSV completed successfully.");
            }

            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Console.WriteLine($"An error occurred: {ex.Message}");
            }
        }

        private static string EscapeCsvValue(string value)
        {
            if (value.Contains(",") || value.Contains("\"") || value.Contains("\n"))
            {
                return $"\"{value.Replace("\"", "\"\"")}\"";
            }
            return value;
        }
    }
}