Observations from hacking around with all kinds of hardware and software
from 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:
SAS 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:
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.
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.
SAS recently released Hotfix 41EG14 for Enterprise Guide 4.1. The hotfix resolves issues identified in:
Enterprise Guide 4.1 Hot Fix 41EG14 (167)
I created some nice data cubes using SAS Data Integration Studio recently. I had a local, regional, and state-level hierarchy for my geographical dimension as well as a monthly, quarterly, and annual hierarchy for my time dimension. I had eight measures which were vital for assessing where the organization was through time. I added drill-through to detail records capability and useful, descriptive names for all of measures, hierarchies, and dimensions. To present my cube to the staff via SAS Web Report Studio, I needed to make an information map first. I loaded up SAS Information Map Studio 3.1 (IMS 3.1) and added my cube data. I dragged my dimensions and measures over to the new information map window and noticed that the descriptive names of my measures were truncated. I went to the properties of those measures and tried to add the missing letters. Each attempt to save my edits prompted a dialog box stating “This data item label is invalid”. I counted up the characters in each of the truncated names and noticed that 30 characters was the magic number. I opened up some of my other information maps that had measure names longer than 30 characters, and they looked and worked fine – but they weren’t built from OLAP cubes.
I browsed to support.sas.com, and then drilled down to the Hot Fix page for Information Map Studio 3.1. Compared to the other SAS tools I use, there were relatively few issues addressed in the five hot fix history of IMS 3.1. Browsing down the issue list I did notice the magic number 30, and sure enough, the issue “Measure captions are limited to 30 characters for OLAP information maps” was fixed in hot fix 31MAPCNTR03. I did not have any hot fixes applied, so I downloaded the latest one (31MAPCNTR06) from ftp://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/ims31.html. I applied the hot fix, opened Information Map Studio, added my cube data, and created my information map without a problem.
When using a Microsoft product, I’m used to mousing to the Help menu and choosing About… to find out which updates or service packs have been applied. I haven’t been as accustomed to doing the same thing with SAS software because the updates are applied manually, and I usually remember the last update I performed. I haven’t been as good at keeping track of these these lately, so I decided to to use the Help –> About SAS Enterprise Guide technique to see what it told me. Sure enough, it stated “SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1.0.508: hot fix 41EG04 has been applied”. Alright, I have that information, but is this the latest hot fix? The easiest way to check is to browse over to http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/ent_guide41.html to check out the Enterprise Guide 4.1 Hot Fix history. It appears that I was a few hot fixes behind and it is time to apply the current hot fix. One nice feature about Enterprise Guide hot fixes: each hot fix is cumulative, so you only need to apply the latest hot fix, not worrying about the ones you missed.