SAS 9.1.3 Language Reference: Concepts, Third Edition, Volumes 1 and 2

CEDA offers these advantages:

• You can transparently process a supported SAS file with no knowledge of the file's data representation or character encoding.

• System performance is maximized, because a read operation requires a single translation between native and foreign representations, rather than a translation from native representation to transport file to native representation.

• No interim transport files are created.

• CEDA eliminates the need to perform explicit steps in order to process the file.

• The internal numeric representation that is provided by CEDA is more precise than that provided by the XPORT engine with PROC COPY. CEDA uses a one-step translation from the native representation of the source environment to the native representation of the target environment, whereas the XPORT engine uses a two-step transformation from a file's native representation to the target environment by means of a transport format.