Thotwave seem to be one of the more active SAS partners, when it comes to publishing information and advice on how to get the best out of your SAS environment.
Checkout their Papers and Presentations page, there is some great stuff there.
Archive for February, 2008
SAS Log Trolling
Feb
27
27
When you install SAS 9 Business Intelligence server, Data Integration Server, Analytical Server or a SAS Solution, you will find that there are now a myriad of log files produced that you should (yes you really should) monitor and archive.
Install multiple of the SAS components on multiple physical servers and log trolling is even more fun.
So I have started to document the location and uses of these logs at : A list of SAS 9 Log locations and uses
Its probably going to take a while to populate all the details, so if you know of something that already exists, let me know.
SAS and the Office (apologies to Ricky Gervais)
Feb
27
27
Every now and again SAS comes out with something that I find very funny (in a good way, mostly).
There have been a couple of video’s that SAS have developed that fall into that category.
SAS Australia produced a video as part of the SAS 9 launch that was a take off of ‘The Office’ television series.
It cracks me up everytime I watch it.
Alison has a link to it on the sascom blog.
Required SAS Intelligence Platform User id’s
Feb
20
20
When you do a new SAS 9 install, there are a number of distinct user id’s that have to be created, which map to specific roles within the SAS 9 environment. While you can change the default usernames, it is recommended that you create and use these distinct user id’s rather than using a single (or combined) id.
The required user id’s are:
sasadm – The SAS Administrator user id should be created on your metadata server machine. This user has privileges to manage user accounts in metadata and administer the metadata server. The SAS Administrator has unrestricted access to the metadata and this user ID should be protected accordingly. This ID should only be used for the SAS Management Console application.
sassrv- The SAS General Server user id should be created on your server machines. You must make the SAS security group its default group. This account will be used by the object spawner to launch stored process servers. This account will need access to any OS resources required to run stored processes. The default configuration of the SAS 9.1 Intelligence Architecture creates this single account for load balanced, stored process server usage. Additional server accounts can be created to give different levels of access as required.
sasguest- The SAS Guest user id will need to be created on your metadata server machine. This user is a generic user account and should have the lowest level of security privileges. This user id is used by the SAS® Information Delivery Portal to log users into the public kiosk area.
sastrust- The SAS Trusted User will be created on the metadata server machine. Because this user ID is a trusted ID, SAS servers such as the OLAP server and mid-tier applications can use this ID to impersonate authenticated clients on the metadata server; that is, the servers can communicate with the metadata server on behalf of the clients. This is a highly privileged account and should be protected accordingly.
sasdemo- The SAS Demo User will be created on your metadata server machine. This user has permission to demonstrate the SAS software you have installed and to verify the configuration.
saswbadm- The SAS Web Administrator will be created on your metadata server machine. You need only create an account for the Web administrator if you will be installing web applications, such as SAS® Web Report Studio, SAS® Web Report Viewer, or SAS Information Delivery Portal. This user has permission to administer the SAS Web infrastructure.
This information was sourced from Sugi 29 – Paper 225-29
Top Deployment Considerations for the SAS® 9.1 Intelligence Architecture
Which also provides a great overview of how the whole SAS 9 environment hangs together, check it out.
Backing up your Environment
Feb
19
19
Every now and again SAS issues a whitepaper with recommended best practice for administering your SAS9 environment. There is a great whitepaper over at SAS Support titled:
It outlines the best practice for backing up your SAS9 environment and covers the areas:
- metadata
- WebDav content
- SAS Data Sets
- SAS Scalable Performance Data Server (SPDS) files
It doesn’t include:
- Configuration files
- Backup software recommendations
- backup management processes for archiving and storage
As well as outlining the SAS tools available to backup up your environment it also provides a good overview of how all the technical components fit together and recommended back approaches.
SAS Functions
Feb
16
16
SAS functions enable you to add powerful logic to your SAS code.
According to the SAS Online Documentation, SAS functions are defined as:
“A SAS function performs a computation or system manipulation on arguments and returns a value. Most functions use arguments supplied by the user, but a few obtain their arguments from the operating environment.”
You can see details on what SAS functions are and how they can be used at SAS Functions and Call Routines overview online documentation page.
You can also see a complete list of the functions available at the SAS Functions and Call Routines Dictionary online documentation page.
Definition of Metadata
Feb
15
15
Great post by Mike Ferguson called Data Management Needs A Solid Foundation – The World of Metadata over on the Dataflux Blog
I agree with him when he says that he struggled with the definition of Metadata as “data about data”, so I really like his version of:
“When it comes to data, does the user know what it means?”
What is Dataflux?
Feb
14
14
With a hat tip to Joyce Norris-Montanari there is a great blog post over at Victor Fehlberg’s Tech Postings called What is DataFlux?
Victor takes us through a walk through of cleaning up address data using Dataflux, with screenshots and all!
I am always amazed at how many companies recognise they have a data quality issue, and then relegate it to a ‘spare time’ project, rather than a priority.
As they say “you can’t manage what you don’t measure” just as important is my own “any decision based on crap data is likely to be a crap decision”
SAS Cloud?
Feb
13
13
SAS has published their February Technical Newsletter, a copy can be found here.
Interesting article about SAS onDemand for Academics.
Basically you download a SAS Enterprise Guide or JMP client, configure it to talk to hosted SAS servers across the Internet and wallah, SAS on demand (oh and hand over some dosh of course)
Only available for:
“SAS® OnDemand for Academics is available for use with courses at colleges and universities in the United State”
Not quite a true Web 2.0 Software as a Service (Saas) model, but definitely a change in business mode for SAS.
How long before they offer BI Server and open it up to everybody?
SAS is not for Sale (or is it)
Feb
10
10
Interesting interview with Dr Goodnight over at InformationWeek.com.
What interested me was not the standard “we are not for sale” line from Dr Goodnight, or the fact that lots of the large vendors have tried to engage in purchase discussion, but the comments at the end.
Probably a case of sour grapes from ex-employees, but then again…
From my point of view he is right that anybody that purchased SAS would slash and burn staff, and unlike people like Larry Ellison, Dr Goodnight has always seemed (in the media at least) comfortable with a being a wealthy man, but no desire to be the wealthiest, so I can’t see him deciding to sell anytime soon.
On the flip side he is no longer a spring chicken and SAS will encounter much stronger competition from the Microsoft/Oracle/IBM juggernaut’s in the future so maybe he will eventually lose the ability to choose one way or the other.
There was always a view that the migraton of the International business into Carey was a move to make the business more streamlined and saleable. Perhaps it was just a way to make it more agile.
As I have posted before I still think a merge with somebody like HP is inevitable in the long term.
The comments to that article reminded me of a something I was told by a long term SAS employee a few years ago. Apparently if you were a Senior person in Carey you dreaded getting a phonecall from Dr Goodnight asking you to “meet him at the airport”. As the story goes it was advisable to take the cab fare for your trip home with you, as you would no longer be able to expense it after meeting him.
If the story is true then at least he is able to make the hard decisions when required….
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