SAS7BDAT SQL Explorer

An interactive browser-based tool for uploading .sas7bdat files and querying them with SQL — entirely client-side using WebAssembly.

How It Works

1. Upload a .sas7bdat file (drag-and-drop or file picker)
2. The file is parsed in-browser via the readstat-wasm WebAssembly module
3. Data is loaded into AlaSQL, a client-side SQL engine
4. Write SQL queries in a syntax-highlighted editor (powered by CodeMirror 6)
5. View results in an interactive, sortable table (powered by Tabulator)
6. Export query results as CSV

No data leaves your browser — all processing happens locally.

Quick Start

Serve the directory with any static HTTP server. The entire directory must be served (not just index.html) so the browser can load the .js and .wasm files alongside it.

From the repository root:

# Python
python -m http.server 8000 -d examples/sql-explorer

# Bun
bunx serve examples/sql-explorer

Or cd into the directory and serve from there:

cd examples/sql-explorer

# Python
python -m http.server 8000

# Bun
bunx serve .

Then open http://localhost:8000 in your browser.

Note: The page must be served over HTTP(S) — opening index.html directly as a file:// URL won’t work because browsers block WASM loading from the local filesystem.

WASM Files

The readstat_wasm.js and readstat_wasm.wasm files are copies from examples/web-demo/. If you rebuild the WASM module, copy the updated files here as well.

To rebuild from source (requires Emscripten):

cd crates/readstat-wasm
./build.sh
cp pkg/readstat_wasm.js pkg/readstat_wasm.wasm ../../examples/sql-explorer/

CDN Dependencies

All loaded automatically from CDNs — no npm install required:

Example Queries

Once a file is loaded, the data is available as a table named data. Some queries to try:

-- Preview all rows
SELECT * FROM data LIMIT 100

-- Count rows
SELECT COUNT(*) AS total_rows FROM data

-- Filter rows
SELECT * FROM data WHERE column_name = 'value'

-- Aggregate
SELECT column_name, COUNT(*) AS n FROM data GROUP BY column_name ORDER BY n DESC

-- Select specific columns
SELECT col1, col2, col3 FROM data LIMIT 50

Column names with spaces or special characters should be wrapped in square brackets: [Column Name].

For the full list of supported SQL syntax, see the AlaSQL SQL Reference.