Encode Password for SAS Remote Submission

Author

Affiliation

Mingze Gao, PhD

Macquarie University

The Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) allows one to submit and execute SAS programs to the cloud. WRDS has an instruction on accessing WRDS data from SAS on our own PCs. Generally, you should use:

%let wrds=wrds-cloud.wharton.upenn.edu 4016;
options comamid=TCP remote=WRDS;
signon username=_prompt_;

rsubmit;

/* Code for remote execution goes here. */

endrsubmit;
signoff;

However, if you want to save the effort of entering username and password every time, you’ll need to encode your password. Concluding the two articles, basically you just need to follow the steps below.

Simple Steps

First, open your SAS program locally on your PC, run the following command and replace 1234567890 with your WRDS password:

proc pwencode in="1234567890"; run;

The output {SAS002}23AA9C2811439227077603C8365060A44800CA1F is the encoded password (which is 1234567890 in this example).

Do NOT share your SAS program with encoded password!

Encoded password functions the same as your plain-text password. You should never make public your password in any way.

Next, put the following statements at the beginning of your SAS program and replace my_username with your WRDS username:

%let wrds=wrds-cloud.wharton.upenn.edu 4016;
options comamid=TCP remote=WRDS;
signon username=my_username password="{SAS002}23AA9C2811439227077603C8365060A44800CA1F";

After these statements, you’ll be able to submit your SAS program remotely to and execute on the WRDS server by enclosing your statements with rsubmit and endrsubmit. An example would be:

rsubmit;
proc download data=comp.funda out=funda; run;
endrsubmit;

As you can guess, this statement actually downloads the whole Compustat Fundamentals Annual to the local work directory, with the downloaded dataset also named funda.

Lastly, after everything, you should run signoff to close the connection with WRDS.

Full code is as below.

%let wrds=wrds-cloud.wharton.upenn.edu 4016;
options comamid=TCP remote=WRDS;
signon username=my_username password="{SAS002}23AA9C2811439227077603C8365060A44800CA1F";

rsubmit;
proc download data=comp.funda out=funda; run;
endrsubmit;
signoff;

Replace my_username and the encoded password with your actual WRDS username and encoded password, paste it in the SAS program editor and press F3. You’ll be downloading comp.funda in a few seconds!

Video Instruction

I made a short video introduction as well, available on my YouTube channel.