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Blogging about all things SAS |
SAS has announced support for SAS Enterprise BI Server and SAS BI Server (SAS 9.1.3 SP4) using Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (IE 7) on Windows XP Professional SP2.
You will need to apply hotfixes to your environment to get it to work.
They also announced support for Foundation SAS components on Microsoft Windows Vista.
I await 9.2 and full support for Vista and Firefox with baited breath.
A great post from Stephen Daniel about the value of SAS Enterprise Guide over at his blog.
I have to agree with all his points, the only negative I would add is that its integration with the SAS Metadata Server is not where it should be, but it gets better every release, bring on EG 4.2!
EG is a no brainer for any user who has never coded in SAS and a must have for any data analysts worth their salt.
However I have always struggled to persuade seasoned SAS Programmers to make the move. Apart from Graphs, they can always wack out code faster than they can use EG (and I have even tried a few shoot out’s to prove the point).
However with EG projects no being included in Metadata Impact analysis, the improved security capabilities EG allows and the licensing benefits compared to a fully loaded Base SAS PC, corporations are starting to make the decision for them.
Having said that the self proclaimed “SAS Uber Geek” in New Zealand has almost seen the light regarding SAS Data Integration Studio, so maybe he will see some value in EG will be next, and if he does I will be sure to post immediately.
Out of the box SAS and specifically the SAS Business Intelligence Suite has some awesome capabilities. But as always we want more and so consultants (and SAS themselves) often develop custom extensions to do the specific things a customer requires.
One of the most common is the development of custom portlet
to provide additional functionality within the SAS Information Delivery Portal.
One of our goals at sasInct is to develop a number of prebuilt portlets, whic we can provide at a reasonable price.
One of the portlets I used the most in my SAS demo environments was a text portlet, where I could enter free form text. But it was more valuable than that because I also used it to enter HTML which enabled me to do deliver a raft of customised content for users.
So with that in mind we are have developed our first portlet, and you guessed it we have written from the ground up a text based portlet.
We are currently working through the installation and user guides and when these are finished we will announce it available for purchase and download.
http://www.sconsig.com/sastip.htm
Interesting page on the “SAS Consultants Interest Group” website.
It contains a raft of links to hints and tips to assist you in our SAS coding endeavours.
Saw a problem note about installing SAS Web OLAP Vewier over on the SAS Support site.
The interesting thing was the recommendation to create a SAS Software Depot (SSD) to do the install, rather than installing from CD.
I have to say that a software depot does make installs much easier (and quicker). Effectively when you create a Software Depot it copies all the install CD’s to a hard drive, in a format that you can install straight from the hard drive (and never have to put in a CD again 
As part of the install from the Depot the install wizards ask what components you want installed, and you can point it at your setinit to only install what you are licensed for, magic!
Only downside is that the Software Depot often conatins all SAS products for all operating systems so can be very large. For example a full depot using a SAS internal setinit (i.e all products and all platforms) comes out at a whopping 35GB.