Introduction

Access to Financial and Economic Databases

The DATASOURCE procedure and the SAS/ETS data access interface LIBNAME engines (SASECRSP, SASEFAME, SASEFRED, SASEHAVR, SASEOECD, SASEQUAN, SASEWBGO, SASEXCCM and SASEXFSD) provide seamless, efficient access to time series data from data files supplied by a variety of commercial and governmental data vendors.

The DATASOURCE procedure includes the following features:

  • support for data files distributed by the following data vendors:

    • DRI/McGraw-Hill

    • FAME Information Services

    • Haver Analytics

    • Standard & Poor’s Compustat Service

    • Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP)

    • International Monetary Fund

    • US Bureau of Labor Statistics

    • US Bureau of Economic Analysis

    • Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

  • ability to select the series, frequency, time range, and cross sections of extracted data

  • ability to create an output data set containing descriptive information about the series available in the data file

  • ability to read EBCDIC data on ASCII systems and vice versa

The SASECRSP interface LIBNAME engine includes the following features:

  • enables random access to time series data residing in CRSPAccess databases

  • provides a seamless interface between CRSP and SAS data processing

  • uses the LIBNAME statement to enable you to specify which time series you want to read from the CRSPAccess database and how you want to perform selection

  • enables you access to CRSP Stock, CRSP/COMPUSTAT Merged (CCM), or CRSP Indices Data

  • provides convenient formats, informats, and functions for CRSP and SAS datetime conversions

The SASEFAME interface LIBNAME engine includes the following features:

  • provides SAS and FAME users with flexibility in accessing and processing time series data, case series, and formulas that reside in either a FAME database or a SAS data set

  • uses the LIBNAME statement to enable you to specify which time series you want to read from the FAME database

  • enables you to convert the selected time series to the same time scale

  • works with the SAS DATA step to perform further subsetting and to store the resulting time series in a SAS data set

  • performs more analysis if desired in either the same SAS session or a later session

  • supports the FAME CROSSLIST function for subsetting via BY groups

  • supports the use of FAME in a client/server environment

  • enables access to your FAME remote data when you specify the port number of the TCP/IP service that is defined for your FAME Master server and the node name of your FAME master server in your SASEFAME libref’s physical path

The SASEFRED interface LIBNAME engine includes the following features:

  • enables SAS users to retrieve economic data from the FRED website, which is hosted by the Economic Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

  • provides access to various sources of FRED data, including those from Dow Jones & Company and the Federal Reserve System

  • provides query options that allow you to request information by date, series, source, release, tag, or category

  • enables selection of time series variables that you want to read into SAS based on a list of IDs that name the index or series

  • defines the range of observations based on a specified date range or a specified offset and limit (cutoff)

  • aggregates the selected time series to a specified aggregation frequency and specified aggregation method

  • supports TLS connectivity by obtaining a secure connection using the CONNECT method (if necessary) and a PROXY

  • creates an XML map of the data for dynamic, flexible association of SAS formats and informats for all variables

  • supports various data transformations, including rates of change

  • enables you to select the vintage dates you want to use when accessing archival (ALFRED) time series

The SASEHAVR interface LIBNAME engine includes the following features:

  • gives Windows users random access to economic and financial data residing in a Haver Analytics Data Link Express (DLX) database

  • provides the following types of Haver data sets:

    • US Economic Indicators

    • Specialized Databases

    • Financial Indicators

    • Industry

    • Industrial Countries

    • Emerging Markets

    • International Organizations

    • Forecasts and As Reported Data

    • United States Regional

  • enables you to limit the range of data that is read from the time series

  • enables you to specify a desired conversion frequency. Start dates are recommended in the LIBNAME statement to help you save resources when processing large databases or when processing a large number of observations.

  • enables you to use the WHERE, KEEP, or DROP statement in your DATA step to further subset your data

  • supports use of the SQL procedure to create a view of your resulting SAS data set

The SASEOECD interface LIBNAME engine includes the following features:

  • enables SAS users to retrieve time series data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) web site which offers access to statistical data on topics such as agriculture and fisheries, economy, education, employment, energy, environment, finance, health, industry and entrepreneurship, innovation, insurance and pensions, international migration, internet economy, investment, OECD.Stat data warehouse, regional, rural and urban development, science and technology, social and welfare issues, tax, trade, and transport

  • uses the LIBNAME statement to enable you to specify which time series you want to retrieve based on the data set id and the key sets that you specify

  • enables you to limit the time range of data that is retrieved by specifying a start date and an end date

  • reads the JSON data into a SAS data set, and automatically maps the JSON data for dynamic, flexible association of SAS formats and informats for all variables

  • works with the SAS DATA step to perform further subsetting and to store the resulting time series in a SAS data set

The SASEQUAN interface LIBNAME engine includes the following features:

  • enables SAS users to retrieve economic and other time series data from the Quandl website, which offers access to over 8 million time series data sets from 400 sources in finance, economics, society, health, energy, demography, and more

  • provides various sources of QUANDL data, including those from NASDAQ, Merrill Lynch, Nikkei Group, the Wall Street Journal, Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, and various foreign and domestic stock and commodity exchanges

  • uses the LIBNAME statement to enable you to specify which time series you want to read from QUANDL

  • enables selection of time series variables that you want to read into SAS based on a list of QUANDL codes that name the index or series

  • defines the range of observations based on a specified date range

  • sorts the order of observation in either ascending or descending time order

  • enables you to collapse the selected time series to the same frequency

  • supports various data transformations, including those that accumulate or difference the series

  • works with the SAS DATA step to perform further subsetting and to store the resulting time series in a SAS data set

  • supports TLS connectivity by obtaining a secure connection using the CONNECT method (if necessary) and a PROXY

  • creates an XML map of the data for dynamic, flexible association of SAS formats and informats for all variables

The SASEWBGO interface LIBNAME engine includes the following features:

  • enables SAS programmers to retrieve time series data from the World Bank Group Open (WBGO) data website, hosted by the World Bank Group

  • uses the LIBNAME statement to enable you to specify how to retrieve your WBGO data

  • enables selection of time series data that you want to read into SAS based on a list of country codes that name the countries whose data you want to read

  • enables selection of time series variables that you want to read into SAS based on a list of time series indicator codes that name the series

  • defines the range of observations based on a range of years, and an optional page number and number of observations per page to report

  • sorts the order of observations in ascending or descending time order

  • provides a utility data set, XWBGOTPU, containing useful information (downloaded from a specified URL) about countries based on income level, time series indicators based on source ID, or time series indicators based on topic ID

  • works with the SAS DATA step to perform further subsetting and to store the resulting time series in a SAS data set

  • creates an XML map of the data for dynamic, flexible association of SAS formats and informats for all variables

The SASEXCCM interface LIBNAME engine includes the following features:

  • enables random access to time series data residing in CRSPAccess databases

  • provides a seamless interface between CRSP, Compustat XpressFeed, and SAS data processing

  • uses the LIBNAME statement to enable you to specify which data items, data groups, and time series you want to read from the CRSPAccess database and how you want to perform selection

  • supports data-item-handling access methods to CRSP Stock (STK), CRSP/COMPUSTAT Merged (CCM), CRSP Indices (IND), or CRSP Treasury (TRS) DData

  • provides selection based on keys such as GVKEY, PERMNO, INDNO, TREASNO, and TCUSIP for efficient access to data items

The SASEXFSD interface LIBNAME engine includes the following features:

  • enables SAS users to access both FactSet data and FactSet-sourced data that are provided by the FactSet OnDemand service (formerly known as FASTFetch)

  • uses the LIBNAME statement to specify which factlet (provided by FactSet) to use to open a FactSet database and to select the desired access method for subsetting and selecting data

  • provides updated access to various sources of FactSet OnDemand offerings for financial data, including commodity benchmarks, banking data, and broker research

  • works with the SAS DATA step to write the selected FactSet data to a SAS data set

  • enables you to specify a range of dates for time series selection by either relative or absolute dates

  • enables you to specify a FactSet frequency for displaying the data by using any of over 20 available codes

  • provides TLS connectivity by obtaining a secure connection using the CONNECT method (if necessary) and a PROXY

  • allows for ECON_EXPR_DATA and FQL (FactSet Query Language) syntax for function returns from FactSet

  • allows for SPEC_ID_DATA and FQL economic download syntax

  • creates an XML map of the data for dynamic, flexible association of SAS formats and informats for all variables

Last updated: June 19, 2025