Serving SAS data to the web with the ODS

In Chapter 5, Managing Data Reporting in SAS, we talked extensively about how revolutionary the ODS was when it was invented because it allowed graphics to be output from SAS for the first time. In fact, the ODS continued to be updated and was eventually used to output graphics in HTM format, which fosters displaying graphics on the web.

The ODS is still the basic function that outputs graphics in SAS. It can still be directly called up and commands given directly, as we did in Chapter 5, Managing Data Reporting in SAS. But when programming SAS to display graphics on the web, the functions behind the ODS seem to fade into the background. This is because we use different tools, such as the SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Viya, to help us develop programs in SAS that use the ODS, which we will talk about in this section.

But first, let's consider using SAS and the ODS to serve data and reports to the web by examining a web-enabled query...