SAS/ACCESS 9.2 for Relational Databases: Reference, Fourth Edition

908 View Descriptors 4 Appendix 1Figure 33.1Creating an Access Descriptor and View Descriptors for a DBMS TableDBMSTable or ViewAccessDescriptor FileView Descriptor Files. . .View DescriptorsYou use a view descriptor in a SAS program much as you would any SAS data set.For example, you can specify a view descriptor in the DATA= statement of a SASprocedure or in the SET statement of a DATA step.You can also use a view descriptor to copy DBMS data into a SAS data file, which iscalled extracting the data. When you need to use DBMS data in several procedures orDATA steps, you might use fewer resources by extracting the data into a SAS data fileinstead of repeatedly accessing the data directly.The SAS/ACCESS interface view engine usually tries to pass WHERE conditions tothe DBMS for processing. In most cases it is more efficient for a DBMS to processWHERE conditions than for SAS to do the processing.