Visual Studio Code SAS Programming Extension: Meeting You Where You Work

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a popular development environment for programmers. It is free, built on open source and runs everywhere. In addition to robust out-of-the-box software development features, its rich extensibility model makes VS Code powerful. Extension authors have contributed many VS Code extensions, which improve VS Code functionality. SAS recently contributed its own official SAS Extension for Visual Studio Code to the VS Code Marketplace, which makes it more convenient to use VS Code for programming in the SAS language. The SAS Extension for Visual Studio Code provides SAS language features, including SAS syntax highlighting, color themes, code completion, pop-up syntax help, snippets and the ability to run your SAS code and view results directly from VS Code. Come see how you can more efficiently develop SAS programs in VS Code using the SAS Extension for Visual Studio Code!
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[@2idx]

How do we import our own datasets into the IDE? I see you’re working with the ones that are native to the SAS help library.

[@SASUsers]

We are looking into this for you!

[@SASUsers]

As you noted, this presenter's code is written in Visual Studio and accesses data stored in the SASHELP library. In the video, the presenter explains that you can use Visual Studio to develop SAS code. However, the code is submitted to SAS on a server through a connection from Visual Studio to the server. The data used in these examples resides in a physical location that is accessible to SAS on the server machine. The SASHELP library data files are installed on a drive location specified by the systems team that installs SAS components on the server.
Since the data resides on a server, you would not import your data directly into Visual Studio. A more accurate way of describing the process is that you would write code to either read SAS datasets that were accessible to SAS on the server or you would write code that would import your external data (like CSV or Excel files) into SAS format, stored on the server. The data files that you use in your code would need to reside on a server location that SAS can access. Your SAS code to accomplish the import would be written in the Visual Studio editor tool but would be submitted to SAS through the connection to the server that you need to establish.
In this video, from time stamp 09:14 - 11:25 you can see that before the code can run, the presenter must connect to a server and he goes through the steps of connecting so he can run his program and get the results. The data that he's using is NOT in Visual Studio. The data that he's using is accessible to the SAS server that he's connecting to.
We suggest you review this Community Forum posting 2.sas.com/6053YShPx which explains that Visual Studio "offers users an integration point for adding SAS programs and code into their work, without having to switch applications. The tool also offers the ability to connect directly to SAS Viya and run code." In addition if you refer to the above posting, there are numerous comments at the bottom of the post, that provide further clarification about the use of Visual Studio regarding features, installation, and configuration.
If you want to learn more about writing SAS code, we recommend our 2 foundation courses that are free to any independent learner: SAS Programming 1 and SAS Statistics 1, which you can find on this web page: 2.sas.com/6054YShPI along with some of our other free courses. Just click the Start Course button and sign in with your SAS Profile to start the course.
Hope that helps!

[@anjigaduputi7198]

Where we can see the libraries and datasets

[@SASUsers]

Thanks for your question! Casey is using the BASEBALL, CARS, and IRIS data sets from the SASHELP library in his programs. SASHELP is a sample library available in your SAS session.

[@Submersed24]

SAS native IDE is so ugly but I feel VS code doesn't have everything the SAS ide has. But then again, the code structure is so much easier to read in vs code

[@SASUsers]

We appreciate the feedback. Please feel free to reach out with suggestions to improve SAS products: 2.sas.com/6056uXkLy

[@Icharis]

setting up connection isnt quite as simple as it is shown,

[@SASUsers]

Please let us know if you are having trouble with your connections. We are happy to help.