To find information on updates for SAS and to download them, you can go to the SAS Technical Support Hot Fixes page. A SAS hotfix is like a patch: it corrects a problem in the software. From time to time, SAS will bundle the hot fixes together and issue a maintenance release. You can tell which release you are on by starting SAS and looking at the information at the top of the log file. Look for a line that looks like this:
NOTE: SAS (r) Proprietary Software 9.4 (TS1M3)
This says that the version of SAS is 9.4 with the third maintenance release (the “m” is for maintenance). It is usually safer, better and easier to install a new maintenance release than to try to install many hot fixes. Installing a maintenance release is like installing SAS again, but you usually do not need to uninstall the current version of SAS before you install the maintenance release. Also, most maintenance releases install much more quickly than the original installation of SAS. When you are done, you will have one version of SAS installed, the one with the maintenance release. No type of SAS file, such as data files or program files, should be altered or rendered unusable because of a maintenance release.