SAS 9.2

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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Updating SAS PC Files Server Port

Mar
16

When installing the SAS PC File server it defaults to using port 8621.

But if you have the SAS Stored Process server installed in SAS 9.2 it also uses port 8621.

So when trying to start the SAS PC File server as a Windows services it won’t start.

To change the port, open the SAS PC File server via the Desktop Start menu Shortcut.

Was about to type this up in full but found a SAS Support note instead ;-)

Usage Note 36974: Changing the default port that the SAS® 9.2 PC Files Server uses when it is installed as a service

 

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Allowing user to publish content that everyone can automatically see in the portal

Mar
15

Doing some research on the new SAS Addin for Microsoft Outlook 4.3, to trouble shout an issue at a customer site (more on that later) when I came across this post on the SAS Support site.

Sample 36921: Using the SAS® Add-In for Microsoft Office to publish documents that can be accessed from the SAS® Information Delivery Portal

It describes a way to change the default content storage options so that when a user saves a document vis the SAS Addin for Microsoft Office, the conent is automatically available via the SAS portal.

I am a great fan of creating content once and making it easily available to as many users as is useful, via their preferred channel. This is a great technique to help with that approach.

 

 

 

 

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Enterprise Guide 4.3, Making it work with SAS Internal Userid’s

Mar
10

Had an interesting experience with the new SAS 9.2 environment at a customer site.

We have got SAS 9.2 (actually SAS Grid but thats irrelevant for this post) installed on RedHat 5 Linux.  As we are using Linux and not Windows we lose the standard integration with Active Directory.  We didn’t want to implement PAM integration with AD (mainly because nobody can articulate clearly all the steps required to get it working).

So we were left with Host authentication. As we only had a few users in this phase thats not so bad, but as we have a few servers (i.e Grid) I really wanted a easy way to avoid creating userid’s on each server.

Aha I thought Ill use internal SAS user id’s and then get the user to inherit a trusted/host user id to run the SAS processes.

So I setup the user in Metadata with an internal id, made sure they didn’t have a standard user identity (i.e username/pwd against DefaultAuth).  Also assigned the user to be a member of SAS General Servers (to inherit sassrv, planned to change this when it worked) and for extra fun added a OraAuth with a username/pwd for the Oracle DB and assigned the user as a member of that as well.

So into DI Studio and Information Map Studio as the user using the internal userid/pwd and:

  • Connect to metadata – tick
  • Access SAS app – tick
  • Access and SAS Table – tick
  • Run a query – tick
  • Access the Oracle table – tick
  • Run a query – tick

Now connect using EG 4.3 with same internal userid/pwd and:

  • Access metadata – tick
  • Access SAS App – nope

mmmmm talk to helpful onsite SAS installer, he could get it to work by adding DefaultAuth in the EG connection in the Auth Domain field.  Ok try that and yip all good.  So carry on testing.

  • Access SAS App – tick
  • Access SAS Table – tick
  • Run query – tick
  • Access Oracle Table – nope

mmmmm get a could not access Auth Domain.

So into some more tesing, worked out you can type what ever you ant in the Auth Domain connection to get this behaviour (i.e x would do the same as DefaultAuth).

As you do we tried all the combinations we could think of, and no cigar.  So helpful SAS installer logged tech suport track and just go this back.:

How to Configure SAS Token Authentication

Followed the distructions and wahoo we have lift off.

So it looks like you can’t use the standard Username/Password authentication method if you want to use internal userid’s/passwords and EG 4.3.

But SAS Token Authentication does work.

Now to test all the other options to see if this change effects anything else, oh the joy of testing …..

 

 

 

 

 

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New EG 4.3 Hotfix – 5 March 2011

Mar
07

Just noticed Chris has posted an entry outlining a new hotfix for Enterprise Guide 4.3.

Details are here: http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/HF2/C44.html#C44006

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How to add the Outlook addin 4.3 after the fact – thanks Angela!

Mar
04

I while ago I posted about remembering to tick the box for outlook integration when installing AMO 4.3.

Barry commented that you dont see that tick box option when you do an upgrade from a previous version of AMO.

Angela has just posted a way of adding it after the fact over here  Super Important Tip on Upgrading from 4.2 to 4.2 Add-in to MS Office

(mental note to self, given this hidden executable and the EG migration wizard, really need to spend sometime one day clicking on all the .exe’s and see what else is hidden!)

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Installing Enterprise Miner 6.2 Client – Use the install and config option!

Mar
03

Had a weird one this week.

SAS are installing a Grid environment at a customer site.

We had already installed the SAS 9.2 clients on a dedicated Citrix box, so the dev team could test the new SAS 9.2 clients / functionality.

We wanted to add a few clients, including the Enterprise Miner 6.2 client (we aren;t installing a websever so can’t use the web based java client).

So ran the install wizard, selected add additional software and then selected Enterprise Miner client.  Install wizard went through ok and completed succesfully.

But there was no Enterprise Miner shortcut on the start menu, and if I clicked the em.exe I got nada.

After a bit of tooing and froing, the answer was to run the install wizard, do a planned deployment and only select the client tier and then Enterprise Miner.

Thing that is confusing is that Enterprise Guide, Management Console, DI Studio etc all installed ok via the add additional software option.

Just not Enterprise Miner (and no error messages of course).

I won’t rant about the fact that although a lot of the SAS products/client interfaces all finally share the same infrastructure components, user interfaces and functionality (im loving shared prompts), a number of them are stil orphans in this regard (why oh why doesnt EM use std metadata connection profiles like every other SAS client!)

But if you do find that you manually install Enterprise MIner client and it just doesn’t, try a planned deployment.

 

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Dual user accounts – making sure mr cockup doesn’t come to visit (credit to blackadder)

Mar
01

We always recommend to customers that they create two user ids for the SAS Administrators.

One that is granted standard user rights(or developer user rights) and one that is granted administrator rights.

(remember nobody should use sasadm should they!)

The reason is that it stops the administrator users from accidentally doing something they didn’t mean to when in the SAS environment (like delete a workspace server definition), as they will be using their normal account login.

When they need to do something gnarly they use their Administrator login and believe me when I say it does put you in a different head space.

(again your not using sasadm are you!, and we also don’t recommend shared admin user accounts, you need to be able to trace changes back to the admin user who did them)

In SAS 9.1 you were forced to created to host userid’s or Active Directory userid’s for each admin.

In SAS 9.2 you can use a dual account technique outlined here.

Its a short article so copied it here to save me one click later when I need it again.

Users, Groups, and RolesHow to Create a Dual User

To enable someone to alternately function as an administrator and as a nonadministrator, create two user definitions for that person as follows:

  • One definition is based on an internal account and is a member of the SAS Administrators group. See Add Administrators
  • The other definition is based on an external account and is not a member of the SAS Administrators group. See Add Regular Users.

Dual users log on with their internal account when they need administrative privileges and with their external account the rest of the time.

Note:   The only way to make someone a dual user is to give that person two user definitions, each based on a different account. You can’t create a dual user by adding a login to a definition that already has an internal account or by adding two logins to one definition.
Note:   Dual users should use a dedicated client-side connection profile for their internal account. In that profile, the user should leave the Authentication Domain field blank. This optimizes credential reuse.


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Enterprise Guide Addin’s Development Documentation

Feb
27

Chris posted earlier this month about the documentation that is available on the SAS Support site (http://support.sas.com/documentation/onlinedoc/guide/customtasks/) which outlines how to create addin’s for Enterprise Guide.

We showcased our first Enterprise Guide addin at the SUNZ conference last week, it allows users to kill their own SAS exe’s that have gone rogue on the SAS Server.

Ill post more on that baby later this week……

 

 

 

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Calling Chris – How many ways does EG retrieve data?

Feb
17

Well if anybody else can answer this then give Chris a race for his money ;-)

Based on my previous post it got me thinking about hoe EG retrieved the data.

It looked to me like EG retrieved the preview data into the EG project for the table selected, but failed to run the SAS query on the workspace server.

So from that I deduce that EG wasn’t using the workspace server to retrive the preview data.

Wonder if thats true or not?

Chris?

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