We have got SAS 9.2 (actually SAS Grid but thats irrelevant for this post) installed on RedHat 5 Linux.  As we are using Linux and not Windows we lose the standard integration with Active Directory.  We didn’t want to implement PAM integration with AD (mainly because nobody can articulate clearly all the steps required to get it working).

So we were left with Host authentication. As we only had a few users in this phase thats not so bad, but as we have a few servers (i.e Grid) I really wanted a easy way to avoid creating userid’s on each server.

Aha I thought Ill use internal SAS user id’s and then get the user to inherit a trusted/host user id to run the SAS processes.

So I setup the user in Metadata with an internal id, made sure they didn’t have a standard user identity (i.e username/pwd against DefaultAuth).  Also assigned the user to be a member of SAS General Servers (to inherit sassrv, planned to change this when it worked) and for extra fun added a OraAuth with a username/pwd for the Oracle DB and assigned the user as a member of that as well.

So into DI Studio and Information Map Studio as the user using the internal userid/pwd and:

• Connect to metadata – tick
• Access SAS app – tick
• Access and SAS Table – tick
• Run a query – tick
• Access the Oracle table – tick
• Run a query – tick

Now connect using EG 4.3 with same internal userid/pwd and:

• Access metadata – tick
• Access SAS App – nope

mmmmm talk to helpful onsite SAS installer, he could get it to work by adding DefaultAuth in the EG connection in the Auth Domain field.  Ok try that and yip all good.  So carry on testing.

• Access SAS App – tick
• Access SAS Table – tick
• Run query – tick
• Access Oracle Table – nope

mmmmm get a could not access Auth Domain.

So into some more tesing, worked out you can type what ever you ant in the Auth Domain connection to get this behaviour (i.e x would do the same as DefaultAuth).

As you do we tried all the combinations we could think of, and no cigar.  So helpful SAS installer logged tech suport track and just go this back.:

How to Configure SAS Token Authentication

Followed the distructions and wahoo we have lift off.

So it looks like you can’t use the standard Username/Password authentication method if you want to use internal userid’s/passwords and EG 4.3.

But SAS Token Authentication does work.

Now to test all the other options to see if this change effects anything else, oh the joy of testing …..

Details are here: http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/HF2/C44.html#C44006

We showcased our first Enterprise Guide addin at the SUNZ conference last week, it allows users to kill their own SAS exe’s that have gone rogue on the SAS Server.

Ill post more on that baby later this week……

Based on my previous post it got me thinking about hoe EG retrieved the data.

It looked to me like EG retrieved the preview data into the EG project for the table selected, but failed to run the SAS query on the workspace server.

So from that I deduce that EG wasn’t using the workspace server to retrive the preview data.

Wonder if thats true or not?

Chris?

Customer picked up an issue with not being able to schedule EG 4,2 projects successfully on Windows 64 bit operating systems.

SAS Support have posted a note:

http://support.sas.com/kb/35/654.html

Which outlines a workaround to manually create a .bat file to run the scheduled projects.

I do believe SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3 has been released with a raft of new features!

A couple of presentations outlining what is new can be found here:

• SAS® Programmer’s Paradise: New Goodies in SAS® Enterprise Guide® 4.3
• Enterprise Guide 4.3 and Other Upcoming SAS Releases

And the official doco is here:

• http://support.sas.com/documentation/onlinedoc/guide/index.html

Looks like the other 4.3 clients (i.e WRS, Portal, BI Dashboards) are still slated for October 2010 (the year is always as important as the month sometimes , but Chris and team delivered Enterprise Guide 4.3 as promised in August (well done Chris!)

Now it seems that to get hold of EG 4.3 you need to request it from your account manager.

However this SAS Discussion Forum post http://support.sas.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=10452 indicates that some people have got hold of it by updating their software depot.

Reading between the lines I think it looks like the process is to contact your account manager to get a new download order and then update your software depot to get the software.  But as I said im guessing here.

Also it looks like there is some confusion about whether EG 4.3 will run on SAS 9.2 M2 or if SAS 9.2 M3 is a pre-requisite.

What I understand is that EG 4.3 requires SAS 9.2 M3 to be supported, but that it may work with M2.

If anybody has anymore info feel free to update SAS Discussion Forum post.

Oh and lastly reading the doco it seems that you need to migrate your EG projects to 4.3, even if they are currently 4.2.  I wonder if this means that they are then incompatible with EG 4.2 after that (like the migration for EG 4.1 > EG 4.2).  Think I need to contact my partner manager and get the new download order number and test a few things.

So in Web Report Studio you can have the prompts that have been selected (i.e City = Auckland) automatically displayed on a report.

The customer is of course not using WRS but is using Enterprise Guide, Stored Processes and Office Addin.

They worked out a way to have Stored Processes that are delivered via Excel/AMO to display the selected prompts when executed, and we could use this concept in EG to effectively create two list reports (one for report content and one for selected prompts) and combine them in report.

But I was wondering if any knew of a way to have the prompts shown in a graph output etc?

If you run Production / UAT / Development environments you can make it easy for users to start choose which environment they want before starting EG and thus removing the need to go through the conneciton wizard each time to change environments.

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/enclient/61192/HTML/default/a003280786.htm

Creating Desktop Shortcuts for Different Profiles

After you have created profiles, you can associate a profile with a shortcut on the Windows desktop. This capability enables you to start SAS Enterprise Guide with a specific profile by clicking on a specific shortcut. You can also start SAS Enterprise Guide without a profile by using a desktop shortcut.

To associate a profile with a desktop shortcut, follow these steps:

1. Create a shortcut for the file SEGuide.exe. By default, it will be in the directory C:\Program Files\SAS\EnterpriseGuide\4.2.
2. Right-click on the shortcut that you created and select Properties.
3. To start SAS Enterprise Guide by using a specific profile, add /profile:<profile name> at the end of the string in the Target box. You must include a space before /profile. If the profile name includes spaces, you must enclose the name in quotation marks:

   "C:\Program Files\SAS\EnterpriseGuide\4.2\SEGuide.exe" /profile:"SAS Metadata"

   To start SAS Enterprise Guide without a profile, add /noprofile at the end of the string in the Target box. You must include a space before /noprofile:

   "C:\Program Files\SAS\EnterpriseGuide\4.2\SEGuide.exe" /noprofile

4. Click OK to close the Properties dialog box.
5. You can now rename and move the shortcut to the desktop.

Things I like:

• The new folder structure that 9.2 Metadata introduced, works a treat in EG to save projects, files etc
• New layout is good, especially the window with folder view, server view, task view etc in one
• The conditional logic is way cool!
• The status bar that gives you more details on what is running is great
• Function level security means its easier to roll out in a controlled way
• The project auto recover has saved me a few times already
• The prompting framework rocks
• Use of SAS/Access for PC file formats (if licensed) makes things faster
• Query wizard joins now clearly explain inner, left, right and outer joins
• Raft of additions around querying aggregated values, as well as detailed records
• Accessing Information Maps works fully, no more limited functionality
• Task templates rock, you can create all your graphs automatically using your default corporate styles/themes
• The kill button actually works, invaluable!

Things I still can’t get to grips with:

• Double clicking on a node opens the result table , not the query, still haven’t got used to that
  (update from Chris @ SAS “hold the Ctrl key when you double-click on a task/query node and EG will open the task dialog instead of the results.”)
• Tabs are gone and yes pulldown is better use of screen realestate (especially for big projects) but tabs were easy.
• F4 to get back to process flow view is now only works dependent on what you are viewing
• There is now a filter and sort option and a query options, almost got used to it though

Things that suck:

• Dependent prompts don’t work (create a Stored processes and they do though)

The team from SAS NZ did a great preso on whats new in SAS EG 4.2 at SUNZ this year, copy of overview paper here:

http://www.slideshare.net/sunznz/sas-enterprise-guide-whats-new

I have just posted my experience with the EG Migration Wizard

Once the EG project is in 4,2 format a few other things have surfaced:

• When importing MS Access or Excel files in the project, the import function has seemed to fundamentally changed, this caused a number of issues, specifically around importing date fields
• Also it changes the title of the import file node from the database or excel file name to the access table or excel sheet name.  A little frustrating when multiple excel spreadsheets are being imported and they are all based on sheet1!
• The query wizard has changed the way it handles calculations on calculated items, not sure exactly how, but query nodes that worked fine in 4.1 error in 4.2.  However once we recreated these calcs manually it all worked fine.

Little niggles and all can be fixed, but again don’t under estimate the amount of effort to get these things converted.