Posts Tagged ‘ SAS Metadata ’

SAS Metadata Objects (and left over artifacts)

Mar
31

We have been doing some work/testing on our Wiki integration with the SAS Metadata Server.

We have a test page that shows all the Metadata objects by type in the repository, I thought these ones were interesting:

Sample 133 – List TestCat objects
Sample 134 – List TestFlea objects
Sample 135 – List TestGrandKitten objects
Sample 136 – List TestKitten objects
Sample 137 – List TestLeg objects
Sample 138 – List TestMouse objects
Sample 139 – List TestReqAttrs objects
Sample 140 – List TestRoot objects

Obviously they are test artifacts that the developers forgot to remove.

I think I should go and check the Metadata Associations to see if the the TestLeg is associated with the TestCat or the TestMouse ;-)

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BI / DW Project Documentation – The Power of a Wiki

Jul
29

Great post over on Hexware’s blog with recommendations on what you should be documenting as part of your BI / Data Warehouse project.

I know of a couple of SAS Data Warehouse sites that are using a Wiki as a collaborative environment for documentation and we are using Mediawiki on a SAS BI/DW project I am working on at the moment.

We are using the Wiki to document all our processes, development standards, business rules and content (when we get time of course).

One of the things I struggle with is how to integrate the technical metadata, that resides in the SAS Metadata Repository, with the business metadata we are storing in the Wiki.

To that end at sasInct we are developing a web service that will interogate the SAS Metadata Repository and then display the results via a Mediawiki plugin. The goal is to enable the technical metadata to be streamed to the Wiki in realtime and remove the need to copy and paste etc, or maintain two version.

We are also starting to make use of the description fields in Information Maps to provide business metadata to users when running a report, but we haven’t come up with an approach yet of how to populate that from the Wiki, or how to enable a user to click on an object in a report and open the relevant Wiki page with the business metadata.

Feel free to comment if you have done something cool in this space.

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Configuration Troubleshooter (Identifying what to do when your in the poo)

Configuration Troubleshooter (Identifying what to do when your in the poo)
Apr
09
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Within the SAS Management Console there is a plugin called ‘Configuration Troubleshooter’ whihc has always been blank for me. I thought it was a bit like the ‘Roadmap’ capability in SAS Management Console, i.e a place holder for something that hadn’t been implemented yet (or just never got developed as expected).

But with a hat tip to Barry Stevens at Housing New Zealand, it is a extremely powerful tool and even easier to setup.

So what is the Configuration troubleshooter? Well according to an excellent paper from SAS called

Best Practices for SAS BI Administrators: Using SAS Configuration Troubleshooter to Keep SAS Solutiions and SAS® BI Applications Running Smoothly

it is:

“The Configuration Troubleshooter is a plug-in for SAS® Management Console that is used to query and display the configuration of a SAS Business Intelligence environment. The Configuration Troubleshooter gathers configuration data from three main sources: the SAS® Metadata Repository; Web servers and Web application servers; and configuration files, and displays the data in a window for review and interpretation.”

For me it is a great tool that enables you to investigate what you have got setup, how and where. It also enables you to create your own rules to document and monitor areasthat aren;t in the standard Configuration Triubleshooter setup.

Checkout the SAS paper and have a go.

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