Archive for November, 2010

Migrating from SAS BI Dashboards 4.2 to 4.3

Nov
30

There is a SAS note that will be very helpfull in understandong the differences between SAS BI Dashboards 4.2 and 4.3.

It also has links to other usage notes outlining some issues you might encounter.

Check out:  Usage Note 40474: SAS® BI Dashboard 4.3 is completely new software

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Web OLAP Viewer is dead (RIP)

Nov
28

I remember when SAS 9.1 was released and the new SAS Web OLAP viewer for Java (SWOVJ) was released.

It was a great new interface to replace the old MRV.

It went through a few iterations, but not a lot changed (although I was always confused about which version could only open Cubes and whihc could open Cubes and Relational adata).

And then there was the SAS Web OLAP Viewer for .Net (SWOVN), always tricky in demo’s trying to decide which one to demo. showing both would always confuse people, especially as the both had different functionality.  (By the way the answer ended up being demo the Java one, unless the customers were a Microsoft bigets)

The goal of SAS development was always to roll the OLAP Viewer functionality into Web Report Studio, and after just completing a SAS BI 4.3 client upgrade it looks like it has happened.

In the upgrade notes it says:

“The product has been upgraded from Version 4.2 to Version 4.3.
The SAS Web OLAP Viewer application is no longer supported. It has been replaced by functionality that is available in SAS Web Report Studio 4.3.”

So SAS Web OLAP Viewer me old friend, thanks for all your help, and RIP.

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Data Management Maturity Models

Nov
22

I am a great fan of Maturity Models.

I find them an excellent way of articulating to a business user where their organisation is at in terms of technology, governance or business processes and what we need to do to improve them.

There are a quite a few Maturity Models out there now, from Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, Analytics, Campaign Management, ……

There are also quite a few organisations that produce and publish maturity models, analysts such as Gartner, specialty software companies such as Dataflux and even behemoths such as Oracle and IBM.

I found this great presentation (Data Governance Part II: Maturity Models – A Path to Progress) over at http://www.nascio.org/.

It puts a number of Data Management maturity models into one pack, so you can peruse and choose your favourite (or create your own of course)

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Wahoo – Elvis has entered the building (and he brought the SAS 4.3 BI Clients with him)

Nov
16

Thanks to Chris for posting a comment to let me know that the SAS 9.2 –  4.3 BI Clients have been released and the doco is out as well:

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/whatsdiff/63928/HTML/default/viewer.htm#pdtnewspecifics.htm

There goes my weekend ;-)

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SAS BI Clients 4.3 are they still coming?

Nov
08

Well as far as I know the new SAS BI Clients are still due for release this month.

And SAS New Zealand have sent out invites for a seminar to show case then in December.

Has anybody heard anything different?

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Capturing Screenshots on a Mac

Nov
06

Because I always forget!

  • To capture the entire desktop, press Command-Shift-3. The screen shot will be automatically saved as a PNG file on your desktop.
  • To copy the entire desktop, press Command-Control-Shift-3. The screen shot will be placed on your clipboard for you to paste into another program.
  • To capture a portion of the desktop, press Command-Shift-4. A cross-hair cursor will appear and you can click and drag to select the area you wish to capture. When you release the mouse button, the screen shot will be automatically saved as a PNG file on your desktop. (The file is saved as PDF in Mac OS 10.3 and earlier.)
  • To capture a specific application window, press Command-Shift-4, then press the Spacebar. The cursor will change to a camera, and you can move it around the screen. As you move the cursor over an application window, the window will be highlighted. The entire window does not need to be visible for you to capture it. When you have the cursor over a window you want to capture, just click the mouse button and the screen shot will be saved as a PNG file on your desktop. (The file is saved as PDF in Mac OS 10.3 and earlier.)
  • Add Control to the two shortcuts above to place the screen shot on the clipboard instead of saving it to the desktop.
  • Another method for capturing screen shots in Mac OS X is by using the bundled Apple utility, Grab, located in the Applications > Utilities folder. Grab is useful if you need to include a cursor or a menu in your screen shot, or if you want to save your screen shot to TIFF format. To include a cursor, first go to Grab Preferences and select the cursor icon you wish to have in your screen shot. To capture the screen with Grab, run Grab, then choose of the capture modes from the “Capture” menu: Selection, Window, Screen, Timed Screen.
  • When you choose the Selection mode in Grab, you can capture a specific region of the screen by dragging around it. Grab will display a tooltip showing the size of the region you have selected and the screen shot will open in a window when you release the mouse button. The cursor will not be included.
  • When you choose the Window mode in Grab, an instruction window will appear asking you to select the window you wish to capture, then click the “Choose Window” button. When you click the button, the instructions will disappear and the window you click ill be captured, including the mouse cursor at the position where you click (if a cursor was selected in Preferences).
  • When you choose the Screen mode in Grab, an instruction window will appear asking you to click the screen when you are ready to capture. The mouse cursor will be included in your screen shot at the position where you click (if a cursor was selected in Preferences).
  • When you choose the Timed Screen mode in Grab, an instruction window will appear, allowing you to prepare your screen for capture. When you are ready, press the “Start Timer” button and you will have ten seconds before the screen is captured. This allows you to open menus and sub-menus, if necessary. After ten seconds the entire screen will be captured. The mouse cursor will be included in your screen shot if a cursor was selected in Preferences.
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