Reading SAS sas7bdat files stored in remotely

[minhankho]

Hi All,

Saw that Alteryx are able to read local sas7bdat files, how about sas7bdat files that are stored on a remote machines? Are there any ways for Alteryx to read those remote data files?

Thank You!

[Qiu]

@minhankho 
If it is a file, it should not matter if it is local or remote, as long as it is accessible.

[minhankho]

Hi Qiu,

Understood the point where I would be able to read the file as long as I can access it.

But those files that I am trying to access in stored remotely, on a server. By using the file option it would only bring me to my file explorer where I wouldn't be able to get those files, only those stored on my local machine. 

So here trying to see if there are ways that can read sas7bdat files stored on remote server which right now I can only read them using SAS.

Thanks!

[Qiu]

@minhankho 
So you mean you dont have the file sharing function enabled on the remote server?
then I am out of ideas, soryy... 😑

[BrandonB]

Your organization could use something like SAMBA to mount it so that you could access it just like a network location. If you need to establish a secure SFTP connection you might be able to leverage paramiko with the Python tool taking an approach like this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37738573/reading-sas-files-on-a-remote-server 

This approach could be done via a Python tool at the start of a workflow and then just use Alteryx.write(df, 1) to write the dataframe out into the workflow to be used downstream.