SAS has released SAS 9.4 Maintenance 8, the latest update to SAS 9.4.

Security is the primary focus of the Maintenance 8 update. This release contains updates for many of the third-party technologies that are used by the platform, including the Java runtime environment (JRE) and many of the third-party JAR files. This release also adds support for major releases of supported operating systems, while limiting support for operating systems that are no longer supported by their respective suppliers. My colleague Margaret Crevar has summarized these changes in this SAS Communities post.

As with all SAS maintenance releases, this release "rolls up" the hotfixes and enhancements delivered since the last maintenance update (SAS 9.4 Maintenance 7). Most SAS platform products and solutions have also been updated to remain compatible with this release and take advantage of enhancements. However, there are some products and solutions that will not be available immediately, or that will not deliver support for SAS 9.4 Maintenance 8.

Like other maintenance releases for SAS 9.4, SAS 9.4M8 is covered by the SAS Support policy for the "Standard Support" timeframe according to its general availability date: January 2023. (Current policy offers Standard Support for 5 years from the GA date.)

While this maintenance release doesn't contain new features, it does demonstrate the commitment of SAS to support users of the SAS 9.4 platform for many years to come. (See "Your platform, your way" in "Your analytics, your way" from Shadi Shahin.) New data and analytics capabilities are delivered in the SAS Viya platform, which offers monthly cadence releases via its continuous delivery model.

For an overview of all product changes and updates in SAS 9.4 Maintenance 8, see the What's New topic in the SAS documentation.

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