Blogging about all things SAS

I posted earlier about the removal of the Public Kiosk in SAS 9.2 / Portal 4.2.

All the feedback I got stated that they turned off the Public Kiosk in SAS 9.1.3 / Portal 2.x as a matter of course.

Just noticed a SAS Tech support notice “Enabling unchallenged access to content in SAS® Information Delivery Portal 4.2” which outlines how to allow access to the portal without the need to login.

So obviously a few people still wanted it.

Great post over at BI Keynotes : http://bikeynotes.blogspot.com/2009/04/sas-web-infrastructure-kit.html

Unfortunately it is in French, so care of google translate, here is a repost.

In SAS 9.1, SAS Information Delivery Portal is the Web application “SAS Portal Web Application Shell. The latter is provided with the component SAS Web Infrastructure Kit and specifically the module SAS Integration Technologies. For information, the module SAS Integration Technologies is the technological base of the SAS 9 platform and is delivered with all the packages based on components of the latter (eg, SAS Data Integration Server or SAS BI Server).

Playing the role of technical base, the Web application “SAS Portal Web Application Shell” loads the full functionality offered by the SAS portal. By default, only basic features are active. To “wake up” all the features in sleep provided by the Web application “SAS Portal Web Application Shell,” the components supplied by SAS Web Infrastructure Kit must be added by installing the SAS portal.

Below is a list of functionalities and features of the Web application “SAS Portal Web Application Shell”:

* Support for single sign-on (Single Sign-On or SSO) to other SAS web applications (eg, SAS Web Report Studio or SAS Web OLAP Viewer for Java).
* Support only applications stored SAS Portlet Collection Portlet “. For information, the portlet “Collection Portlet” open-ended version supports all BI objects and allows, for example, to list the reports SAS Web Report Studio and opened automatically by redirecting users to SAS Web Report Viewer (viewer reports provided with SAS Information Delivery Portal).
* Only administrators (ie members of the Technical Group “Portal Admins”) can create pages (personal or shared) and access the management application preferences. Therefore, an end user will not be a mere consumer of the information published by the directors.
* Full support of the repository and files WebDAV:
o The portlet “WebDAV Graph Portlet” to create charts from data published in XML format in the WebDAV repository,
o The portlet “WebDAV Content Portlet” to restore files WebDAV within portal pages,
o The portlet “WebDAV Repository Navigator” to explore the contents of WebDAV.

Note: Although the documentation indicates the contrary, it is possible to use WebDAV portlets with a server other than Xythos WebDAV Server WebFile (usually Apache HTTP Server or IBM HTTP Server). To function properly, these portlets need a pre-established connection to the WebDAV repository. For more information, please see the comments associated with this article.

In conclusion, if you have a package of the SAS 9 platform (with the exception of SAS Enterprise BI Server, which already includes SAS Information Delivery Portal), you have the component SAS Web Infrastructure Kit and you can deploy a portal SAS “light “no additional cost. Although limited in terms of features, the Web application “SAS Portal Web Application Shell” allows you to centralize user access to various Web applications from SAS.

For more information on the Web application “SAS Portal Web Application Shell” and the existing differences with SAS Information Delivery Portal, see the section “Introduction to the SAS Web Infrastructure Kit” (available on the website of U.S. support SAS) at the following address: http://support.sas.com/rnd/itech/doc9/portal_ov/index.html.

In SAS eBI 9.1 and 9.2 there is no easy way to migrate Portal pages across SAS instances.

So if you follow what we call Optimal practice and do all development in a separate SAS Development environment, then promote it to a UAT environment and finally to Production, there is a lot of rework instore.

We were thinking about creating a sasInct module to assist in this task but thanks to a tip off (thanks Robin) we have found out that SAS are about to release a utility that enables you to migrate portal pages on both 9.1 and 9.2.

It is due in the next couple of weeks, so ask your friendly SAS Account Manager or Presales Dude/Dudette.

Once I have tested it I will let you know what I think.

Struck a frustrating problem the other day where new users were unable to login to the SAS Portal.

When they tried they would get an “incorrect login” error, even though we could login in succesfully to any other windows environment (we are using windows authentication)

So off to the log files we went and we noticed this gem:

   UpdateMetadata return code=807fe8f4....
   DoRequest return code=807fe8f4....
   The user does not have permission to perform this action.

Which according to this SAS Support article:

Usage Note 20381: The login might fail with a permission error

and states that the user does not have writemetadata permission on the Portal Application Tree, which means when they login the Portal cannot create a new folder in the metadata to hold their portal preferences.

Of course I would say that the error message that was displayed to the user was far from helpful, but as I was tightening metadata security before this started appearing then it all makes sense.

Thank SAS for the logs otherwise I think we would be chasing this one for a while.

I always forget what portlets are installed by default in the SAS Portal (compared to the many I add to test etc)

So quick note for myself to remind me (sourced from Understanding Portlets)

(more…)

If you are aiming to deliver self service report creation to end users, then no doubt you are deploying SAS Web Report Studio to enable them to create and manage reports.

If you have SAS Portal installed it is possible to provide single-signon between WRS and Portal.

In the Portal you create a new Application link and use:

http://webserver:port/SASWebReportStudio/logonFromPortal.do

Once the user has added this to their collection portlet, they can click on it and it will bypass the Web Report Studio login screen, automatically using their authenticated login details.

A SAS stored process is a SAS program that is hosted on a server and described by metadata. One of the major values of stored processes is that they can be consumed by most SAS reporting tools, including SAS Portal, Web Report Studio, Enterprise Guide and the Addin for Microsoft Access.

I have always been a big fan of using them as I believe they are great for creating predefined business rules which users can consume in their reports without having to define any code.

There is an interesting paper at SUGI 31 Making your own Balanced Scorecard using the SAS Information Delivery Portal that describes how a combination of Stored Processes and the SAS Portal can be used to present users with a Balanced Scorecard.

Now if it was me I would have used SAS Strategic Performance Management , but then I hate reinventing the wheel.

But I think the paper shows how with a combination of SAS Portal and Stored Processes, ”there ain’t much you can’t do.