Enterprise Guide

SAS 9.2 Migration – EG Migration Wizard not so wizzy

Mar
12

There is a migration wizard delivered with Enterprise Guide 4,2 (9.2) that enables you to convert your EG projects automatically when you upgrade.

It is a an exe file in your EG 4.2 directory.

This wizard scans the selected EG projects and allows you to do a global replace of Servers, Libraries and External files.

The alternative is to open each EG project and manually change these (or alternatively do a fully automated SAS 9.2 migration, where you dont change any of the server names, libnames or file paths ;-)

So I have found this wizard a bit hit and miss.  Don’t get me wrong it still saves you time, but I have found instances where it doesnt actually update the EG Projects (normally when trying to convert a lot of projects at once).

Also with project that have a lot of tabs, it sometimes forgets to do one.

Another issue is it changes the libname of a source table, bit if the query saves the result table in a permanent libname (i.e. not work) then it doesn’t seem to update those ones.

So all fixable and the wizard is better than no wizard, but don’t under estimated the effort required to convert these projects.

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SAS 9.2 Private OLAP Server (playing nice with others and their toys)

Dec
02

Enterprise Guide 4.2 and Office Addin 4.2 now have the ability to access OLAP cubes that are not registered in SAS Metadata.

Effectively this allows you to use the SAS tools to access non SAS cubes (assuming you have the OLEDB connector installed)

These are called Private OLAP Servers.

Following extract  from 051-2009: What’s New in SAS® Add-In 4.2 for Microsoft Office explains it well.

 

PRIVATE OLAP SERVERS

 

Also new in 4.2 of the SAS add-in is the ability to define private OLAP servers. A private OLAP server is a direct connection to an OLAP server, rather than choosing one that is defined in metadata. The SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office now supports connecting to third-party OLAP providers, such as Microsoft Analysis Services or SAP BW, or any other vendor that defines an OLE DB compatible provider.

This is useful for users who have already invested in an OLE DB provider for OLAP. Now it is possible to use SAS to view and analyze that data. In SAS Add-In 2.1 for Microsoft Office, this was not allowed; the SAS add-in was able to connect to only a metadata-defined OLAP provider.

 

Once the user has opened the cube into the PivotTable, it works the same as any other PivotTable. The user has the full breadth of functionality available to them, such as drill-through, and adding calculated measures and members.

 

 

 

 

 

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SAS EG 4.1, Sees Double, Goes Kapow!

Sep
28

Great Gotham Cities, Batman!

Got a real interesting situation with SAS EG 4.1.

A lot of our DI developers and SAS Analysts use EG like demons.

They all have dual monitors as well, so they can work twice as hard (or keep a track on the latest SAS blogs while working ;-)

One issue we are having is that every now and again EG just disappears on them, kapow, no errors, no warnings, no pop ups just gone. And of course it normally happens when they are in the middle of an important project and they havent saved the EG project for ages.

We think we have tracked it down to the use of Dual Monitors but arent completely sure that is it.

Anybody else expereinced this?

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SAS Security – Is the glass 1/2 full or 1/2 empty

Apr
26

Been doing some work on SAS Security lately and the post over on Angela Halls blog about Managing Metadata via EG, elicited my post. Particluary the comment “NOTE:: Deleting Metadata can cause orphan content elsewhere, so use this capability judiciously.”

When you first install SAS it by default optimistic, by that I mean it allows public, and SAS Users to do lots unless you stop them.

Now if you do the SAS Administrators course the first thing you get told is to secure metadata, i.e change it to a pessimistic view, where users can’t do anything unless you grant them (or a group they belong to) rights to do so.

Easier said than done, as you can’t just deny everything to Public and SAS Users as nothing will work (because they need to be able to read and write metadata to check what they can do ;-)

So you need to play with your ACT and Group structure to initially deny them everything and then grant access to what you want them to see.

I suggest you at least deny the write metadata on anything you want to keep, before you show them in Enterprise Guide how to delete stuff ;-)

I beleive this all changes in SAS 9.2.

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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!

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Making the move from Base SAS to Enterprise Guide (and please release DI Studio 4.2)

Feb
14

Chris Hemedinger has blogged a number of very good reasons why you would move fomr Base SAS to Enterprise Guide. He has also outlined the things you will loose.

In my experience most SAS programmers are forced by their cpmpanies to move to EG rather than do so willingly (but I amnot saying the move is a wrong one). There are a number of reasons that this move is enforced on them, including:

  • Reducing License costs, by moving from desktoplicenses to server ased licenses
  • Increased code reuse by non SAS programmers
  • Increased documentation, via EG’s semi self documenting features

One of the area I find base SAS Programmers struggle with is the whole idea of Metadata vs Physical table data. So I would recommend spending a bit of time on this with them.

At the moment we would love to move our DI Studio code to EG for one of our projects. The reason?

In EG you can see the log file as the code run’s, in DI Studio you have to wait until it finishes (assuming it does finish).

DI Studio provides the ability to see where in the process flow your job is at, but for now we write our code in DI Studio, then grab it and run it in EG so we can keep up with what it is doing.

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Centralised Folder for EG Projects (or sharing your toys with others)

Nov
25

Enterprise Guide shows a file folder under the SASApp (or SASMain) server in the EG Server list pane, which enables users to save their EG projects on the server.

By default this points to the users personal folder on the server (based upon their login name) and therefore other users can’t see any projects that are saved there.

Often you want to be able to see these projects easily, when you need to re-run one or if the user who created is away (yes Sam I am talking about you!).

On the SAS support site there is a SAS Note that outlines how to change this setting.

Basically you edit the definition for the workspace server, but the options are a little hard to find:

  1. In SAS Management Console, navigate to this location:
    1. Server Manager > SASMain – Logical Workspace Server > SASMain – Workspac Server.
  2. Right-click and select Properties.
  3. Select Options tab.
  4. Select Advance Options button.
  5. Select File Navigation tab.
  6. Select Specify Path and field, type the path.
    1. I.e C:\EGProjects
  7. Select OK and OK.

Then create separate folders under this location to enable the EG Projects to be stored by subject area.

Also don’t forget to change the file system security on these fodlers to allow users to read /write to it.

Of course the other option is to save the EG Projects in the Metadat tree / Webdav.

The benefit of this is that you are supposedly able to do impact analysis of these projects. (Has anybody tried this?)

I haven’t had a lot of luck getting the Webdav storage for EG working consistantly (and I like to be able to see the EG Projects in the file system for some reason as well)

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Making Libnames read/write in Enterprise Guide

Nov
13

If you ever try to create a dataset or any other write function to a Metadata based Libname, from within SAS Enterprise Guide you will have encountered the old “METAOUT=DATA” error message.

What this says is that due to the libname bing a metadata based libname you can’t write to it.

Well there is an easy way to fix this:

  1. In SAS Management console go to the properties of the desired libname
  2. Click on the extended attributes tab
  3. Create an new entry with the following values
    1. Name = AssignMode
    2. Value = 2
  4. Try it via EG now and Helens your auntie (but not your prime minister – apologies to non kiwis its a GIS joke!)

This lovely option is easily found here:

http://support.sas.com/kb/20/760.html

Other option values you can use are:

0 Assign using SAS Enterprise Guide
1 Assign using the META engine, METAOUT=ALL (default META engine behavior)
2 Assign using the META engine, METAOUT=DATA
3 Assigned by the SAS server (pre-assigned)
This info (and a raft of other cool Enterprise Guide stuff) can be found here:

http://support.sas.com/techsup/technote/ts788.pdf

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“DON’T PANIC” – The end of SAS EG 2.x is not Imminent

Oct
19

SAS announced a while ago that Enterprise Guide 2.x would expire at the end of 2008.

It seems quite a few site are still running EG 2 (including one I am working at currently) so SAS have announced that they will provide a patch to keep EG running.

Thanks to Chris for his blog alerting me to the fact.

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SAS Enterprise Guide can now run (or sprint for that matter) on Vista

May
16

SAS has just announced that Enterprise Guide is now certified for Microsoft Vista over on their blog.

I can understand why you would install and run SAS Enterprise Guide, but haven’t quite seen the value in Vista, thank goodness Dell now ships there PC’s with Windows XP.

Now if only SAS would release Enterprise Guide for my Mac (5% market share and growing ;-)

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