Category Archives: Statistics

SAS Framework Data Server

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SASComparing my SAS 9.2 and 9.3 Enterprise Business Intelligence (EBI) environments, a notable difference between daemons started by the sas.servers script was identified.  In 9.2, we had a SAS Table Server daemon.  It was not available in our 9.1.3 EBI installation, and was released in the 9.2 version.  Apparently SAS removed it from the 9.3 architecture, but a new daemon, the SAS Framework Data Server, was introduced in its place.  There is scant documentation available on support.sas.com about utilizing or administering the Framework Data Server.

What is SAS Table Server?

from the SAS 9.2 Table Server Administrator’s Guide

The SAS Table Server is a data server that provides scalable, threaded, multi-user, and standards-based data access technology in order to process and seamlessly integrate data from multiple data sources. The server acts as a hub that provides clients with data by accessing, managing, and sharing SAS data as well as several third-party relational databases.

What is SAS Framework Data Server?

from the SAS 9.3 Intelligence Platform Middle-Tier Administration Guide

The SAS Framework Data Server is a database server that is the default location for middle-tier data such as alerts, comments, and workflows, as well as data for the SAS Content Server and SAS Service Parts Optimization. The server is provided as an alternative to using a third-party DBMS. The server cannot be used as a general-purpose data store.

SAS ODS: {thispage} and {lastpage} and PDF Output

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When developing new reports, we typically give the end users a choice of output formats to choose from.  The SAS Output Delivery System (ODS) provides a versatile framework to transform the results of SAS procedures into consistent, high quality reports in formats that are widely used by information consumers: HTML (HyperText Markup Language), PDF (Portable Document Format), RTF (Rich Text Format), Microsoft Excel, and others.  The majority of our reports (run as stored processes surfaced in the SAS Information Delivery Portal) contain tabular output, which is generally displayed to a user in HTML format with the option to download that data as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Some reports are designed to be formatted as a document, and include large amounts of ODS text, tables, and graphs.  We generally use ODS functions such as {thispage}, {pageof}, or {lastpage} to display the page number or number of pages in the document.  When using RTF as our ODS destination, the creation of a Microsoft Word document could not be easier.  We did run into one issue when using the PDF output destination, however.  Due to the configuration of printer drivers on our computer systems, the page numbers were not showing up in our documents, because SAS was unable to determine a default page size and margins.  We contacted SAS Technical Support and they pointed us to SAS Problem Note 31703 as a possible fix.  Tech Support solved our problem – we added the –uprint and –uprintmenuswitch options to our autoexec.sas configuration file and restarted our object spawners and our PDF documents included page numbers!

Want to know more about the SAS Output Delivery System?  Go to the Base SAS ODS Focus Area or download the Output Delivery System Tip Sheet.

Locating the Log Files for the SAS 9.3 Middle Tier

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SASI have been doing some maintenance recently on one of our SAS EBI installations and needed to review the logs generated by the middle tier.  At some point any BI administrator will have to do this, so here are the default locations, directly from SAS:

The log files for the SAS 9.3 middle tier are located in the following directories:

Application Servers

Red Hat JBoss

  • /JBoss-home-directory/server/SAS-JBoss-server/log/server.log
  • /JBoss-home-directory/server/SAS-JBoss-server/log/boot.log

Oracle WebLogic

  • If WebLogic is started as a service, a UNIX daemon, or a batch process, the location is
    /WebLogic-home-directory/user_projects/domains/domain/servers/managed-server/logs/server.log.
  • If WebLogic is started using the Node Manager, the location is
    /WebLogic-home-directory/user_projects/domains/domain/servers/managed-server/logs/server.out.

IBM WebSphere

  • /WebSphere-home-directory/AppServer/logs/server/SystemOut.log
  • /WebSphere-home-directory/AppServer/logs/server/SystemErr.log

WebDAV Server

  • SAS Content Server:
    /SAS-configuration-directory;/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASContentServer9.3.log

SAS Web Applications

  • SAS Admin:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASAdmin9.3.log
  • SAS BI Dashboard:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASBIDashboard4.3.log
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASBIDashboardEventGen4.3.log
  • SAS BI Portlets:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASBIPortlets4.3.log
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASJSR18RemotePortlets4.3.log
  • SAS BI Web Services:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASBIWebServicesforJava9.3.log
  • SAS Information Delivery Portal:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASPortal4.3.log
  • SAS Logon Manager:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASLogon9.3.log
  • SAS Package Viewer:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASPackageViewer4.3.log
  • SAS Preferences:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASPreferences9.3.log
  • SAS Remote Services:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/RemoteServices.log
  • SAS Shared Apps:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASSharedApps9.3.log
  • SAS Stored Processes Web Application:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASStoredProcess9.3.log
  • SAS Web Report Studio:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASWebReportStudio4.3.log
    Note: Beginning with the second maintenance release for SAS 9.3 (TS1M2), the log is named SASWebReportStudio.log
  • SAS Web Infrastructure Platform Client Access:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASWIPClientAccess9.3.log
  • SAS Web Infrastructure Platform Services:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASWIPServices9.3.log
  • SAS Web Infrastructure Platform SOAP Services:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASWIPSoapServices9.3.log
  • SAS Workflow Services:
    /SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASWorkflowServices9.3.log

In my case, I was looking for my Websphere application server logs.  And as I should have suspected, my System Admin did not have the application servers or the log directories installed in the typical locations, so I had to do a little hunting.

Enterprise Guide 4.1 Die Date

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saslogofrom support.sas.com:

The original SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1 expiration date is December 1st  of this year. SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1 customers who have not applied the SAS Enterprise Guide hot fix 41EG09wn or later will be affected. The workaround is to download and apply the latest hot fix:

http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/ent_guide41.html

SAS Enterprise Guide die dates and extensions are documented in the SAS Note 33359:

http://support.sas.com/kb/33/359.html

Hot Fix Release A53007 for Enterprise Guide 4.22 Released

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saslogoSAS released Hot Fix A53007 for Enterprise Guide 4.22 on June 29, 2010.  This Hot Fix applies to 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows.  The Hot Fix address two issues, including:

  • Issue 38357 – SAS stored process might fail to run when the language is set to Norwegian
  • Issue 40130 – Errors might occur running a project after migration in SAS Enterprise Guide

You can obtain more details at the SAS Enterprise Guide 4.22 Hot Fix Downloads page at http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/HF2/A53.html#A53007.

An Issue Creating a Format in SAS Enterprise Guide 4.2 after Installation of Hot Fix A53005

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I had been using SAS Enterprise Guide 4.22 for months without any crashes, but in May I installed the SAS Hot Fix A53005 primarily because it was available.  After installation of the Hot Fix, whenever I attempted to run the Create Format task, even in a brand new project, I received the following error:

SAS Enterprise Guide has encountered a problem.  We recommend that you save your work and restart SAS Enterprise Guide.

I submitted a ticket to SAS Tech Support, and for SAS, it took a relatively long time to get resolved.  Tech Support had to forward the issue on to the Development Team, who determined that the hot fix (and A53003 before it) relied on a patched version of the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime.  The patched version of the runtime was used because it fixed a security hole in ATL (Active Template Library).

Tech Support sent me the link for the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package ATL Security Update (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766a6af7-ec73-40ff-b072-9112bab119c2&displaylang=en), and when I applied the update to my system, the Create Format task worked fine.

Undo an Action in Microsoft Excel with the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office Installed

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SAS Even though we have Maintenance Release 2 installed on our SAS clients, we will still get undo problems in Excel.  Here is one more step that needs to be performed:

The issue described in SAS Note 36601: Cannot undo changes in Microsoft Excel when the SAS® Add-In for Microsoft Office is installed can be fixed by applying the second maintenance release for SAS 9.2 (TS2M2).

However, after you apply the maintenance release, you must also select the option Always Prompt for Data Source. This option can be found under SAS –> Options on the Tasks page. See Usage Note 37701: Additional SAS® Add-In for Microsoft Office configuration is required to restore functionality of the Undo button in Microsoft Excel.

SAS Enterprise Guide Version Compatibility

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saslogo from Chris Hemendinger, senior software manager in SAS R&D and author of The SAS Dummy

Supported Versions and Combinations:

  • You can use EG 4.1 with local SAS 9.2 (no metadata server).  Everything local on your Windows machine; it should just work.
  • You can have both EG 4.1 and EG 4.2 on your local machine, along with local SAS 9.2, and all should work together.
  • You can have SAS 9.1.3 and SAS 9.2 on your local machine, but EG (either version) will use only the version of SAS that is registered for local use, which is usually the version that was installed last.  You can run "sas /regserver" to register a particular version of SAS.
  • You can have SAS 9.1.3 and SAS 9.2 side-by-side on a server machine with two metadata servers (one 9.1.3 and one 9.2) and object spawner instances, as long as you assign unique ports for the metadata server and workspace servers.  So in this way, you could point EG 4.1 at the SAS 9.1.3 instance, and EG 4.2 at the SAS 9.2 instance.  This approach might be helpful for transitioning.

Unsupported Versions and Combinations:

  • You cannot use EG 4.1 with remote SAS 9.2, nor can you connect to a SAS 9.2 metadata server.  The SAS 9.2 metadata server has a different API that EG 4.1 doesn’t speak.
  • You cannot use EG 4.2 with SAS 9.1.3 at all: EG 4.2 relies on some new features within SAS 9.2 that aren’t compatible with SAS 9.1.3 (ODS Graphics and some new APIs).

Sending SAS Enterprise Guide Data to Microsoft Excel

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saslogo A strong point of SAS Enterprise Guide is that it interacts seamlessly with many data types using the Microsoft Jet Engine (Excel .xls, Access .mdb, dBase .dbf, Lotus.wk?, Paradox .db, and text files .txt .csv etc).  To provide even more flexibility, there are also a few different ways in Enterprise Guide to output data to Excel.  A user can export their data to Excel, export to Excel as a step in a project, or they can right-click on a data set and select Send To –> Microsoft Excel.  The latter is a convenient feature that many users are comfortable with, but in Enterprise Guide 4.1, your results might not be what you expect.

One data set that we were working with included a date variable which was stored as a DATE9. format.  A user complained that every time she exported the data it ended up in DATETIME format, and all of the zeroes from the time complicated her project.  I tried to replicate her problem many times by exporting the same data set into Excel and I ended up with DATE9. every time.  I finally asked her to send screen shots of what she was doing, and noticed what she called “export” was actually using “Send To –> Microsoft Excel”.  I explained that to get the results she wanted, she needed to use the “real” export technique.  After I solved this problem, I browsed to support.sas.com and sure enough, SAS had already identified this issue in Microsoft Excel might not maintain date formats in SAS Enterprise Guide.  Apparently this issue is fixed in Enterprise Guide 4.2 but I have not tested it yet.

New Features to be Included in SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3

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saslogo I was one of the unfortunate ones who was unable to attend the SAS Global Forum in Seattle last week.  Thanks to discussion forums, blogs, and Twitter, I was able to keep up with a lot that was going on.  I was particularly interested in some of the new features that will be available in the next version (4.3) of Enterprise Guide, which is scheduled to be available this summer.  Below are some of the features that were mentioned:

  • context sensitive keyword completion (syntax suggestion)
  • relative file addressing
  • code reverse engineering (see what old code is doing)
  • an autoexec process flow for projects (runs automatically when project is opened)
  • code analyzer (reads a program and turns it into a process flow)

I also had the opportunity to preview some of the new features in the upcoming version of Web Report Studio (4.3).  SAS is expanding drag and drop capabilities, which makes creation of report even easier.  The biggest news though is the ability to use more than one data source in a report section!