Archive for April, 2009

SAS Information Maps Preview – I can drill down!

Apr
28

Was doing some development with Information Map studio today, developing a map on top of a SAS OLAP Cube.

Went into preview mode to test the map and double clicked on a tile and wahoo it drilled down the dimensions hierarchy.

Didn’t know you could do that, learn something new everyday!

Share
Posted by  
0 Comments

SPM Formulas – Divide by Zero errors

Apr
27

Been struggling with how to trap a divide by zero issue’s in SPM formulas, so we don’t show the dreaded NULL value.

With a little help from SAS support, finally worked out what I need is:

IF((/100))

So basically if the dividing calculation results in an error (i.e one of the dividers is 0 or missing) then put a 0, otherwise do the calc.

Share
Posted by  
0 Comments

SAS 9.1 OLAP Size Limitations

Apr
27

If you have ever wondered if there is a limit to the size of a SAS 9.1 OLAP cube, then there is and it is documented on the SAS Support site underSAS 9.1 OLAP Cube Size Specifications.

According to SAS 9.2 OLAP Cube Size Specifications limitations also exist in 9.2.

10 points if you can tell me if it has changed in 9.2?

Share
Posted by  
0 Comments

SAS SPM 2.4 User Guide

Apr
16

I was looking for the latest user guide for SPM 2.4 and clicked in the link here on the SAS Support site and got the message:

"SAS Software Documentation 
Documentation for this product is available for customers only. Please contact SAS for details about accessing this documentation.
See your product HELP system for additional information. "

Over on the SAS Support site.

http://support.sas.com/documentation/onlinedoc/spm/

(thanks to the friendly Presales dudes for the pointer)

Share
Posted by  
0 Comments

SPM 2.x Periods (where are you hiding my pretty)

Apr
15

So ever wanted to know where the Period values iN SPM are actually stored?

Well as long as you aren’t trying to do some dodgy updates to the SPM schema, as you know that is against the rules…

The first trick is that Periods are stored in the SAS Solution Data Mart layer not in SPM itself.

They are stored as a master details record with:

  • the master being in SASSDM.sas_member where INTERNAL_DIM_TYPE_ID = -9
  • there are three children records in SASSDM.sas_member_property (joined on member_id) whihc cover:
    • Start Date
    • End Date
    • Period Type

Of course as I have said don’t touch these manually and you should really use the prebuilt SAS Time view to look at them

Share
Posted by  
0 Comments

I love my Job

I love my Job
Apr
13

I read a few blogs off and on when I get time.

Over Easter I have been trying to catch up (as well as doing some paid work, which involves a lot of use of Enterprise Guide, man I love that product) and stumbled across this blog from Jim Dononvan.

What caught my eye was this graphic:

I have to say over the last 15 years I have been very lucky to have jobs that fit the sweet spot (and pay not to badly as well)

Is your current job in the sweet spot?

If not whats stopping you from changing it?

Share
Posted by  
0 Comments

SAS and Sharepoint

Apr
11

Following on from developing our MediaWiki plugin that dynamically exposes SAS Metadata within the Wiki, I have been researching whether we should build a Microsoft Sharepoint Web Part to enable customers to stream SAS Metadata dynamically within Sharepoint.

I came across this paper Paper 390-2009: Henderson, David; Alexandre, Sean - Integrating SAS® Business Intelligence with Microsoft SharePoint” from SAS Forum 2009, that outlines how SAS provides integrations/web parts for BI Dashboards and Stored processes already.

Cool!

Share
Posted by  
4 Comments

Help! – Accessing Informaps and securing Libnames/Tables

Apr
02

So looking for some help from the SAS community.

On a project we have focused on delivering content via Web Report Studio and Infomaps.

We now want to allow users to access the content via Office Addin and Enterprise Guide.

But (there is always a butt ;-) we only want users to access data via Information Map, we don’t want them to access the base libnames or tables.

Why you ask, because we have all the business rules embedded in the Information Maps so we don’t want users bypassing these and defining there own business rules on the base data.

Of course if we deny access to the libname then the Infomaps will fail. We can’t restrict access to all data types (i.e tables) in AMO or EG.

So any ideas out there?

Things we are going to try:

  • Implement workspace server pooling (grant access to tables trusted user, but not actual use)
  • Create a workspace server for WRS reports with full rights inherited and a workspace server for AMO/EG users with linbame rights restricted

But we are pretty sure that neither of these will work.

As the title says, Help!

Share
Posted by  
2 Comments