Characteristics of SAS Engines

This detailed guide explores the various facets of SAS^© engines. It begins with a summary of the most common LIBNAME engines and data connectors, highlighting their uses and providing references to examples and documentation. The document then explains the role of the default Base SAS^© engine (V9 Engine), which is used for SAS^© datasets and is automatically selected if no engine is explicitly specified. It also warns against users specifying internal engines (SASDSV, SQLVIEW, REMOTE).
The inherited engines section discusses the Transport engine (XPORT), used to create cross-environment transport format files (although this is not the best practice), and the SPSS engine, designed to read data created in the external SPSS application from .por or .sav files (requiring SAS^©/ACCESS in the latter case).
Data access models are described in depth, covering sequential access (typical of JSON and XMLV2 engines), random access (illustrated by the POINT= option in the SET statement), group access (based on the BY statement), and multiple passes over data. Finally, the document details locking levels: at the library, member (dataset), and record (row) levels, which manage concurrent access and ensure data integrity, with references to CNTLLEV= options and the LOCK statement.