Archive for April, 2011

Automating the migration of SAS Users and Groups

Apr
30

Was working with a customer last week doing a partial migration across SAS environments.

I needed to migrate a number of users and groups, not a large number so was easy enough to move them manually.

I thought I saw a while ago some automated tools to assist with migrating users and groups, but do you think I could find them again!

Anyway after a quick tweet of frustration Paul from Metacoda came through with a reply pointing me to:

Sample 42251: Partial Promotion of User and Group Metadata

Legend!

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SAS, Oracle Weblogic, VMWare – Do not want to play nicely!

Apr
21

We have been looking to upgrade a client to SAS 9.2 and at the same time move to the clients corporate IT standard of virtualising the environments.

The client has standardised on vSphere and I thought great SAS 9.2 supports vSphere (as much as the following SAS support page say’s SAS supports virtualisation)

SAS® Product Support for Virtualization Environments

But after talking to Oracle about Weblogic support on VMware the answer is no, Oracle do not support any Oracle product on VMWare.

To quote from Oracle Metalink note: 249212.1 (found on a comment in response to another blog) :

“Oracle has not certified any of its products on VMware virtualized environments. Oracle Support will assist customers running Oracle products on VMware in the following manner: Oracle will only provide support for issues that either are known to occur on the native OS, or can be demonstrated not to be as a result of running on VMware. ”

“If a problem is a known Oracle issue, Oracle support will recommend the appropriate solution on the native OS. If that solution does not work in the VMware virtualized environment, the customer will be referred to VMware
for support. When the customer can demonstrate that the Oracle solution does not work when running on the native OS, Oracle will resume support, including logging a bug with Oracle Development for investigation if required.”

So what does Oracle Weblogic support in terms of virtualisation?  OVM of course.  Does SAS support OVM, of course not! (well actually this doesn’t seem to be true more on that later)

If we look at  SAS Supported UNIX Operating Environments we see that Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) is not on the list. If we look at  SAS Support for Alternative Operating Systems we see that OEL is not support but SAS will offer “best efforts” support.

The question is does OVM require OEL?

Well the answer is no, according to this Oracle VM Server for x86 FAQ OVM support Red Hat Linux (REHL).  So in theory we can run Weblogic on REHL in a OVM environment.

Is this supported by Oracle, yes it seems from all the links above.

Is it supported by SAS, well waiting to here back officially, but remember this SAS® Product Support for Virtualization Environments states that they support any virtualisation (but have the same get out of jail free card as Oracle), so that should be a yes, SAS should support the use of OVM!

Now the real issue if after installing SAS eBI, using Oracle Weblogic on RHEL 5 within a Oracle VM environment we strike a problem, who the heck do we ring first?  (you know its going to be SAS Support right ;-)

 

 

 

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SAS Addin for Microsoft Office – Requires WRS to be installed

SAS Addin for Microsoft Office – Requires WRS to be installed
Apr
15
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I was doing some testing of the new Addin to Microsoft Office (AMO) 4.3/M3 a week or two ago and specifically the addin for Outlook.

When trying to open a SAS Report (.srx) in Outlook we got this error.

Looks like the SAS AMO 4.3 plugin relies on the Web Report Studio web services that automatically  get installed when you install the Web tier.

The issue of course is this customer is only using AMO and has not deployed any of the web tier, but in good optimal practice are using Information Maps and .srx reports (created via Enterprise Guide).

So looks like using Outlook to access these .srx is out.

Now I know Kiwi’s (New Zealanders) are known for their number 8 wire approaches and also being frugal (a large number are of course descended from the Scots ;-) , so a number of NZ customers have purchased BI Server and only implemented the SAS Server, Enterprise Guide and AMO, as that meets their current needs.  In these cases it looks like using the Outlook version is out of the question.

And with SAS announcing an AMO/EG only offering again use of .srx reports is out im guessing.

Anyway one positive is after playing briefly with the Outlook capability on my test server, I can actually see the Outlook capability taking over from the Portal eventually.  Why would users want to login to the Portal to get their reports when they can access them directly from within Outlook where they spend so much of their time?

 

 

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Testing I/O on your SAS Server

Apr
13

At the SAS Global Forum 2011 in the Grid architecture session , it was mentioned that SAS servers should be looking for a minimum I/O throughput of between 30-50mb/s per server (or Grid node).

There is a good SAS paper on how to test the I/O throughput of a SAS server on both Windows and Linux/Unix including code examples you can use.

You can find the paper here: http://support.sas.com/rnd/scalability/grid/grid_testingbench.pdf

If you run the code you might get the following error:

“ERROR: Shell escape is not valid in this SAS session.”

If so you will need to turn x commands on for the server, a SAS note outlining how to do that is here:

Problem Note 41058: Unable to submit X commands from SAS® Enterprise Guide® connecting to a SAS® Metadata Server when running SAS® 9.2 or later

 

 

 

grid requires 30-50mb I/O through put per node

 

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Having problems packaging up SAS 9.2 clients for automated deployment/install?

Apr
09

I have had a number of customers who’s IT departments have had no end of trouble trying to package the SAS 9.2 clients for automatic deployment.

They typically are trying to use the Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) capability to create a no touch way of installing the SAS Clients (Enterprise Guide, AMO etc) on users PC’s.

In the SAS Administrators group chat at SAS Global Forum the folks from SAS R&D said they recommend that rather than packaging the SAS Client install via SMS it is a much better option to use a install recorder function of the SAS Deployment Wizard / SAS Install Depot and create a SMS package that calls that.

The SAS Install Depot will need to be made available to all the users PC’s via a mapped drive etc, but you can secure it so the users can’t see it and its only accessible for the installer account that SMS is using to do the deployment.

SAS have posted a set of tips and techniques at:

Installation Note 37041: SAS® 9.2 quiet deployment tips and techniques

So pass the link onto your IT people if they are struggling to package up the SAS Clients as automated install packages.

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Poor old Harrah’s, actions speak larger than presentations

Apr
09

At the SAS Global Forum 2011, the opening session had a great presentation from Harrah’s President and CEO Gary Loveman.

Gary spoke about how Harrah’s make use of SAS Analytics to encourage increased usage of their resorts and casino’s.  He spoke about how they charter flights that fly people for free from different US cities to a Harrah’s resort, and then recoup the costs via the increased gaming revenue.  They use SAS analytics to track the positive ROI and also to determine who to offer the free trip to based on the customers past behavior and  predicted future behavior, that way they ensure they don;t offer a free trip to somebody that would have travelled anyway.

Like I said it was a great presentation and they are doing some great things, but perhaps they should do more and invest in SAS Social Analytics and SAS Text Miner.

Why?  Glad you asked….

Andrew Ratcliffe tweeted this experience with Harrah’s:

Cheated by my #sasgf11 SAS Global Forum 2011 Hotel?http://goo.gl/fb/WzCrZ #SAS

And then blogged about his unhappy experience.  Perhaps SAS Social Analytics could have helped Harrah’s respond quickly in person?

And from my side my flight from NZ was delayed by 4 hours coming over and so I tried to email Harrah’s to say I was going to be checking in at 1am instead of 6pm.  Apart from their shocking website, very hard to navigate via a small device like iPhone, I got the automated email response and nothing else till today when I got an email saying:

—-

Dear Shane,

Thank you for taking the time to write to us about your upcoming visit!

Please accept our apologies for not being able to respond before your arrival date. Due to the high number of e-mail requests that we receive, our response to e-mail generally takes 3 to 5 business days.

If there is anything else we can do to further assist you, please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Thank you,

xxxx

E-Communications Specialist

——-

  

 

My suggestion is again a little investment in SAS Text Miner would enable them to classify emails on receipt and keywords such as “late” could be routed to the “E-Communications Specialist” first!

Imagine my response if when I got to the checkout at 1am the person had said, sorry to hear your flights was delayed Mr Gibson, you must be tired, we will get you to your room straight away.

Bet my blog post would have been a little different.  But then again they probably aren’t mining blog posts for their company name are they.

Still was a cool presentation by their CEO.

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SAS on VMware, new SAS Best Practice paper

Apr
08

I had the pleasure of sitting through a session by Margaret Crevar on I/O limitations of SAS on windows 2008.  Will blog more on the sessions later but really the guts is if you are thinking of using SAS on Windows 2008 and have any sort of I/O requirements then the solution is simple…..

Go Linux.

Anyway once we got onto the discussion of I/O footprints we of course got onto the discussion of SAS on VMware.

Margaret mentioned she had just posted a Best Practice guide on SAS and VMware, which you can find here:

http://support.sas.com/resources/papers/MovingVirtuaVMware.pdf

As with all the papers Margaret seems to publish she actually puts the software through its paces in multiple scenarios before she posts her recommendations, so if you are looking at installing SAS on VMware its a paper well worth reading.

And importantly it was written in conjunction (or at least reviewed by) VMware themselves before publishing which is good news.

Actually overheard another conversation on Wednesday between a VMware person and a SAS R&D bod, which indicated that SAS was struggling to get to the right people in VMware for a while to form the relationships required, but that in the last few months the two companies have managed to connect the right people at the right level and things have accelerated quickly.  Good news for all SAS customers as virtualisation becomes more prevalent.

I wonder if the change is due to Oracle pushing its OVM platform much harder these days (some would say even mandating it) or its was just a matter of right people, right time?

Anyho main thing is the days of “no we don’t recommend running SAS on virtualised environments” seems a thing of the past, so one more step in the process of making SAS part of a standard operating environment for customers and less of an orphan.

 

 

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SAS Licensing/Bundling Changes, 9.3 and others

Apr
08

There seems to be a lot of movement in the the way SAS are bundling and licensing the multitude of SAS solutions and products at the moment.

Here are the changes I think I heard before and during the SAS Global Forum (as always please check with your SAS Account team to confirm the details)

  • SAS Data Integration Server now includes the ability to use Dataflux for profiling only (used to have to have eDI to use any dataflux)
  • SAS eDI Server 9.3 will move to bundling Dataflux Data Management studio rather than the dfPower studio that is bundles in 9.2.
  • SAS has released a AMO only bundle (SAS® Office Analytics for Midsize Business), enabling you to use AMO without needing to license the Business Intelligence server (BI Server) and it even bundles Enterprise Guide and STAT in it as well!
  • Some functions from SAS Graph/ODS are being bundled with SAS Foundation (Base) without the need to license SAS Graph
  • JMP is bundled with Enterprise Miner (Not sure if its only with 9.3 or all versions)

Those are the ones I can remember hearing or reading about, if I find anymore Ill update the post and of course if you know of any changes comment away!

 

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If you need a SAS/Access to JDBC – Let SAS know (Please)

Apr
08

I have been doing some work with a customer who is implementing Business Objects Data Federator as the preferred mechanism for all tools to access their corporate data.

This includes accessing data in their corporate applications as well as the Data Warehouse.

They have a SAS Analytics environment and would like SAS to comply with this standard by accessing data in SAS via the Data Federator rather than accessing the data sources directly.

The trick (isnt there always a trick!) is that the BO Data Federator can only be accessed via a JDBC connection.

Of course I thought no problem, SAS can access any data source in the world, can’t it?  Well no  JDBC seems to be one of the few data sources SAS can not access natively as there is no SAS/Access to JDBC.

We have been testing third party JDBC > ODBC bridges and struck the old SAS/Access for ODBC 64 bit can’t access a 32 bit ODBC driver issue.  And of course the JDBC > ODBC bridge we were testing only had a 32 bit provider.  We have found a different provider with a 64 bit version we are testing now.

Anyway I sat in a session at Vegas presented by the SAS/Access product manager so I asked him if a SAS/Access to JDBC was in the pipeline.

He said they had received a few requests over the years, but not enough to put it on the priority list.

So if you need a SAS/Access to JDBC engine (like my customer does) then log a tech support track now asking for one, and when can help each other help ourselves.

 

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AMO 5.1/9.3 – Some nice features comming

Apr
07

Stopped by the AMO stand at SAS Global Forum 2011 and had a quick look at the new features coming out.

Things that took my interest:

  • AMO 5.1 will work with SAS 9.2 & 9.3, wahoo that will make upgrades easier
    (although any new feature that requires 9.3 will be grayed out if you are accessing a 9.2 backend)
  • In excel you can make a excel cell the basis for a Stored Process prompt, so that means you can setup custom drop downs in the Excel sheet that drives what the STP brings back (i.e month, region etc).  Think about the flexibility that will allow in building excel frontends to SAS
  • AMO 4.3 supports Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 & 2010, AMO 5.1 will only support Microsoft Office 2007 & 2010.  The main reason is the major use of ribbons in AMO 5.1.
    (and before you complain Office 2003 is over 8 years old remember!)

Bring on Q3 – 2011!

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