SAS datasets under IBM MVS do not have the same structure as SAS datasets under MS Windows. Both are binary objects, but MS Windows ('95 or NT) cannot interpret the binary values in MVS SAS datasets.

This may change in the future, but currently only SAS on various Unix platforms supports (to some extent) exchanges of SAS datasets.

Incidentally, someone mentioned to me the other day that SAS reads truncated and otherwise corrupted transport datasets and does not recognize or report anything other than errors in the header record. If so, that suggests that programmers will have to compare observation counts before and after ftp'ing a transport file. We have seen isolated instances of this problem, but have not tested for it. Sig

______________________________ Question _________________________________ Subject: binary FTP of SAS Library Author: Wesley Shaw <Wesley_Shaw@VAPOWER.COM> at Internet-E-Mail Date: 9/25/98 9:38 AM

Is there anyway to to a file transfer of SAS data from MVS to NT using a binary FTP transfer instead of creating transport files?