SOEP & Statistical Software

Additional Required Steps for the SAS-Distribution

• Regardless of how you installed the SAS files, you will have to install/create the SAS formats file. If you choose not to create the formats, you will not have access to any value labels.
  Worse yet, if you have an old version of the formats file left over from last year in the same directory, you will get incorrect value labels, without any warning!
• The formats file used by SAS is specific to each operating system. Therefor you will find three different formats files on the DVD. If you use Windows or Unix then choose the appropriate directory and copy the file to your hard disk. Within SAS, you can use the following statement to include the format specification for all value labels:
  libname library'c:\path\to\directory\';
• If for any reason your local SAS system detects errors with the OS-specific format file, you can use the portable (OS-unspecific) formats file (German Version, or English Version) and create a system specific formats file. To do this, save the Xport formats file to your hard disk. Then run the following program in SAS (simply copy this program below, adjust the path information and paste it into the SAS program editor and run it), to create the binary formats file:
  * ----------------- snip ----------------------- ;
  * export formats information;
  options compress=yes;
  libname MYLIB 'd:\dist2005\sas';
  libname TRANS XPORT 'd:\dist2005\xpt\format8.dat';
  proc format library=MYLIB cntlin=TRANS.fmts;
  run;
  * ----------------- snip ----------------------- ;
• If for whatever reason you would like to create a complete SAS binary distribution based on the SAS-transport files (*.XPT) then you can run the following SAS program: xpt2sas.sas.

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