SAS 9.2 Software Key Highlights WHITE PAPER
Table of Contents About the SAS 9.2 release... 1 Why upgrade to SAS 9.2?... 1 What is included in SAS 9.2?... 1 New software in SAS 9.2... 2 SAS Data Surveyor for Clickstream Data... 2 SAS Data Surveyor for Salesforce.com... 3 SAS Scoring Accelerator for Teradata... 3 Enhancements to Base SAS software... 3 Enhancements to SAS/GRAPH software... 4 ODS Statistical Graphics... 5 Enhancements to data access software... 5 New in-database feature improves performance... 6 Architectural, management and security enhancements... 6 Architectural enhancements in SAS 9.2... 6 System management features in SAS 9.2... 7 Security features in SAS 9.2... 8 Enhancements to analytics software... 9 SAS Enterprise Miner software... 9 SAS/ETS software... 10 SAS/Genetics software... 10 SAS/IML software... 11 SAS/OR software... 11 SAS/QC software... 11 SAS/STAT software... 12 Enhancements to BI and data integration client applications (general). 12 Enhancements to SAS Business Intelligence software clients... 14 SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office... 14 SAS BI Dashboard... 14 SAS Information Delivery Portal... 15 SAS Information Map Studio... 15 SAS OLAP Cube Studio... 16 SAS Web Report Studio... 16 i
Enhancements to SAS Data Integration software clients... 17 SAS Data Integration Studio... 17 Other data integration software enhancements... 18 Enhancements to SAS Enterprise Guide... 19 Installing, configuring and migrating to SAS 9.2... 20 Installation and configuration enhancements... 20 Running SAS 9.2 and SAS 9.1.3 on the same machine... 20 Moving metadata and other content to SAS 9.2... 21 ii
About the SAS 9.2 release SAS 9.2 was released to customers in two phases. The first phase, released in March 2008, included Base SAS and products such as SAS/ACCESS, SAS/GRAPH, SAS/STAT, SAS/Genetics, SAS/ETS, SAS/IML, SAS/QC and SAS/OR. The second phase was released in February 2009. This phase included SAS Business Intelligence and SAS Data Integration software, SAS server and middle-tier components, and updates for the software released in the first phase. Additional products and solutions that use the SAS server and middle-tier components are being released on an ongoing basis. Why upgrade to SAS 9.2? By upgrading to SAS 9.2, you will be able to take advantage of the large number of new features and performance improvements that are included in this release. In addition, you will be able to take advantage of future enhancements, maintenance updates and new SAS products and solutions that run with the updated software. Upgrading will also keep your SAS software compatible with operating systems and other third-party software products as they are upgraded. If your current configuration includes a SAS Metadata Server, tools are provided for migrating your metadata from SAS 9.1.3 to SAS 9.2. See Moving metadata and other content to SAS 9.2 (page 20). The features and enhancements in SAS 9.2 are summarized in this paper. For information about ordering SAS 9.2, please contact your account executive. What is included in SAS 9.2? The majority of the enhancements included in SAS 9.2 are a direct response to requests from our existing customer base. Base SAS 9.2 includes more analytical and graphical capabilities, such as Output Delivery System (ODS) Statistical Graphics and SAS/GRAPH support for ODS styles. New and enhanced features in SAS/STAT, SAS/Genetics, SAS/ETS, SAS/IML, SAS/QC and SAS/OR software enable you to perform a wider range of statistical and analytical tasks. With the enhancements to SAS Data Integration Studio (the GUI component included with SAS Enterprise Data Integration Server and SAS Data Integration Server), you can create and debug jobs more efficiently. In the SAS Business Intelligence applications, all user interfaces have been updated to increase productivity and usability. 1
SAS 9.2 includes significant performance improvements through better use of the underlying hardware and software. The improvements include more widespread use of 64-bit computing, as well as an increased ability to use and manage grids. Support for multithreaded processing has been extended across the platform, from SAS procedures to SAS servers to grid enablement. In addition, new in-database features substantially improve performance by moving analytic tasks closer to your data. For configurations that use the SAS Metadata Server, SAS 9.2 provides a substantially higher level of integration with IT infrastructures. Management of SAS servers is improved through a new logging framework, a new management interface in SAS Management Console and integration with industry-standard monitoring software. Security features have been enhanced to be more robust and IT-friendly. For all types of configurations, you can now download SAS software automatically through the Internet. In addition, software installation and configuration is significantly easier and faster. The new SAS Deployment Wizard prompts for user entries and checks for required software at the beginning so that the rest of the process can run silently and unattended. For more information on SAS 9.2, including comprehensive What s New information, please visit http://support.sas.com/documentation/whatsnew/index.html. The product pages on the SAS Support Customer Web site also are a useful reference for SAS users: http://support.sas.com/software/products/index.html. New software in SAS 9.2 SAS Data Surveyor for Clickstream Data SAS Data Surveyor for Clickstream Data automates the extraction of useful information from large volumes of clickstream data collected in Web logs. It includes templates for common process flows that are used to cleanse and enrich the data. You can customize the template jobs for your own Web logs and outputs. 2
SAS Data Surveyor for Salesforce.com SAS 9.2 includes a new data surveyor that gives you access to data from Salesforce.com customer relationship management (CRM) software. This data surveyor is provided through a partnership with Composite Software. The new Composite Software functionality is also incorporated into data surveyors for other CRM and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, including PeopleSoft, Oracle Applications and Siebel. In previous releases, SAS integrated data from these systems by accessing the underlying database with SAS/ACCESS software. The new data surveyors in this release use the vendor API and certified interfaces, and they comply with the security of each application. SAS Scoring Accelerator for Teradata SAS Scoring Accelerator for Teradata enables you to translate scoring models created in SAS Enterprise Miner into functions that are executed directly within the Teradata Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW). This product enhances the performance of model scoring, resulting in faster processing of analytic models. Enhancements to Base SAS software Base SAS 9.2 includes many enhancements. The SAS customer support Web site, http://support.sas.com/software/92, provides more information about enhancements for the SAS language, including PROC SQL, PROC SORT, PROC REPORT and a host of other procedures. Here are just a few of the enhancements current customers may find especially interesting: The option to capture information about input, output and use of macro symbols from a SAS job while it is running. The SAS Code Analyzer runs existing SAS programs, executing them while generating metadata about the SAS job that is emitted via comments. Using the new SCAPROC procedure, the SAS Code Analyzer captures information about the job step, I/O information (such as file dependencies) and macro symbol usage information from a running SAS job. The new checkpoint and restart modes allow you to resume prematurely terminated SAS batch jobs at the next DATA or PROC step. SAS language updates. You can now write your own functions either in C, C++ or the SAS language and use them in a SAS program. External functions that are written in C or C++ can be used in SAS programs after they have been registered using the PROTO procedure. 3
Enhanced ability to read a series of like-named SAS data sets. Our users asked for this and we ve delivered by letting you use the dash list or colon list syntax. This is the same as how you would specify a list of link-named variables in a DROP or KEEP statement. In addition, the performance of the IN operator has been greatly improved by using a binary tree lookup. Enhancements to SAS/GRAPH software The changes and enhancements for SAS/GRAPH 9.2 are very extensive. Highlights include: The new SAS/GRAPH statistical graphics suite provides a new set of procedures, a new language and a graph editor specifically designed for creating and editing statistical graphics. The new SGRENDER procedure helps you create customized displays by enabling you to write your own templates with the Graph Template Language (GTL). For more information on the GTL, refer to SAS/GRAPH 9.2: Graph Template Language User s Guide, Second Edition, which is available online at http://support.sas.com. All SAS/GRAPH procedures now support ODS styles for all devices. SAS/GRAPH now automatically selects an appropriate device and style for all open destinations. SAS/GRAPH now provides TrueColor support, which allows over 16 million colors in a single image. The new Network Visualization Workshop enables you to visualize and investigate the patterns and relationships hidden in network data (node-link data). The new GKPI procedure generates several key performance indicators. The new GTILE procedure generates tile charts. The new GEOCODE procedure enables you to add geographic coordinates to data sets that contain location information such as mailing addresses or to perform geolocation with non-address location data. The new GINSIDE procedure determines which polygon in a map data set contains the geographic coordinates in your input data set. All procedures now support graphics output filenames up to 256 characters long. The new Scalable Vector Graphics devices enable you to generate SVG output. Several new map data sets, as well as new feature data sets, have been added to the MAPS library. Several existing map data sets have been updated. 4
ODS Statistical Graphics ODS Statistical Graphics, experimental in SAS 9.1, is production in SAS 9.2. (It is included with SAS/GRAPH software and surfaced in many SAS modules.) More than 60 statistical procedures in SAS/STAT, SAS/ETS, SAS/QC and Base SAS have been modified to use ODS Statistical Graphics functionality. The procedures now produce graphs as automatically as they produce tables. In addition, three new SAS/GRAPH procedures (SGPLOT, SGPANEL and SGSCATTER) use this functionality to produce plots for exploratory data analysis and customized statistical displays. We ve extended the functionality of ODS Statistical Graphics with: New graph types and ODS styles that are designed for statistical work. Support for the LISTING destination. The new ODS Graphics Editor, which is a point-and-click interface for enhancing titles, labels and other graph features. You can also add features such as text annotation for data points. Facilities for modifying graphs by changing their underlying templates, which are supplied by SAS and are written in the Graph Template Language. You can also use the GTL to create your own highly customized statistical graphics. Enhancements to data access software SAS/ACCESS software supports additional operating environments for existing DBMSs. Other new features include new or enhanced functions for the SQL_ FUNCTIONS= LIBNAME option, a new SQL_FUNCTIONS_COPY= LIBNAME option for specific database management systems (DBMS), and new or enhanced hyperbolic, trigonometric and dynamic SQL dictionary functions. For most DBMSs, you can now create temporary tables using DBMS-specific syntax with the new DBMSTEMP= LIBNAME option. In SAS/ACCESS to HP Neoview, you can use the new BULKEXTRACT= LIBNAME option along with new data set options for bulk loading and extracting. SAS 9.2 includes new data surveyors for ERP and CRM systems. In previous releases, SAS integrated data from these systems by accessing the underlying database with SAS/ACCESS software. In this release, SAS has partnered with Composite Software to provide data integration with ERP and CRM systems from PeopleSoft, Oracle Applications, Siebel and Salesforce.com. These new data surveyors use the vendor API and certified interfaces, and they comply with the security of the application. 5
New in-database feature improves performance A new in-database feature in the SAS/ACCESS Interface to Teradata for SAS 9.2 substantially improves performance by moving analytic tasks closer to your data. You can publish custom formats, as well as most formats that SAS provides, so that they run inside the Teradata Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW). A SAS_PUT() function, which emulates the traditional SAS PUT function and supports the use of SAS formats inside the database, is created and registered for use in SQL queries. Architectural, management and security enhancements SAS 9.2 brings SAS Business Intelligence, SAS Data Integration and other metadatabased software to substantially higher levels of usability, scalability and integration with IT infrastructures. The new SAS Deployment Wizard automatically configures all of your SAS servers. It can also configure your Web server and deploy the SAS Web applications if you choose this option. The number of manual configuration steps has been greatly reduced, as well as the number of user accounts. Management of SAS servers is improved through a new logging framework, a new management interface in SAS Management Console and integration with industry-standard monitoring software. Security features have also been enhanced to be more robust and IT friendly. All of the SAS Business Intelligence clients have been updated to make users more productive, with features such as context-sensitive menus and dynamic prompts. Architectural enhancements in SAS 9.2 SAS 9.2 metadata-based software includes the following architectural enhancements and improvements to interoperability and scalability: The new SAS Pooled Workspace Server, which uses a new feature called serverside pooling. In this configuration, the SAS object spawner maintains a collection of workspace server processes that are available for clients. Applications such as SAS Information Map Studio, SAS Web Report Studio and the SAS Information Delivery Portal use this server by default to query relational information maps. Increased grid enablement. Support has been added for DataSynapse GridServer and Univa UD Grid MP as grid middleware providers. Greater use of enterprise Web application server capabilities on the middle tier, resulting in higher throughput and more opportunities for scaling. 6
The new SAS Web Infrastructure Platform, which provides basic services and applications that are used by all Web applications. Components that were previously part of the SAS Web Infrastructure Kit, including the SAS Services Application and the SAS Stored Process Web Application, are now part of the SAS Web Infrastructure Platform and are used by all Web applications. This provides more consistency in functionality and administration. The SAS Web Infrastructure Kit no longer exists. The new SAS Content Server, which stores WebDAV-accessible content. This content includes report definitions that are created in SAS Web Report Studio, images and other elements that are used in reports, and documents and other files that are to be displayed in the SAS Information Delivery Portal or in SAS solutions. The server is managed through the new SAS Web Administration Console. System management features in SAS 9.2 For configurations that use a metadata server, new system management features in SAS 9.2 provide more centralized control of your SAS environment and better integration with your IT infrastructure. The new features include the following: A new logging framework for SAS servers. Logs can be sent to a variety of destinations, including files, operating system facilities and client applications. For each destination, you can configure a message layout, filters and other parameters. The framework supports security auditing by logging authentication events, client connections, changes to user and group information, and permission changes. Performance-related log events also can be generated for processing by an Application Response Measurement (ARM) 4.0 server. New server management features in SAS Management Console. These features enable you to remotely quiesce, stop, pause, resume and validate SAS servers, as well as view and manage server connections and processes. You can now view the contents of server logs in SAS Management Console and dynamically change logging levels from the console without restarting servers. Integration with third-party system management tools. Your IT staff can now monitor SAS servers along with other critical servers through tools such as BMC Performance Manager, HP OpenView, IBM Tivoli and Microsoft Office Manager Server. A new interface called SAS Deployment Manager. This interface enables you to automatically update service account passwords in metadata. You can also use it to rebuild SAS Web applications or to remove configuration information for one or more components of your installation. 7
A new Web-based interface called SAS Web Administration Console. You can use this interface to monitor which users are logged on to SAS Web applications, manage folders and permissions in the SAS Content Server and view the current configuration of Web applications. The new SAS Configuration Manager in SAS Management Console. You can use this plug-in to change settings or specify property names and values for Web applications, including the SAS Information Delivery Portal, SAS Web Report Studio and SAS BI Dashboard. You can also use it to manage logging configurations for Web applications. Centralized management of themes. You can now customize SAS themes in a single place and then configure the Web applications to use the themes that you customize. For more information about these and other enhancements, see What s New in System Administration for the SAS 9.2 Intelligence Platform and What s New in Web Application Administration for the SAS 9.2 Intelligence Platform on http://support.sas.com. Security features in SAS 9.2 For configurations that use a metadata server, SAS 9.2 provides more robust and more easily managed security through the following enhancements: Expanded support for roles. With roles, you can manage the availability of application features such as menu items, plug-ins and buttons. This support is available in SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office, SAS Enterprise Guide, SAS Management Console, SAS Web Report Studio and other applications. For administrators, roles are provided for unrestricted access to metadata, metadata server operation and user administration. Simplified inheritance of permissions. For most items, access control inheritance flows through the SAS folders tree (and can cross repository boundaries as needed). Each schema, cube, library and table inherits permissions from only its parent folder. Inheritance from application servers, libraries, OLAP schemas, DBMS servers and DBMS schemas has been discontinued. The new authorization interface always displays effective permissions. It also enables unrestricted users to trace an item s inheritance and look up users permissions to the item. A new metadata server option that prevents passwords from being stored on client machines. When this option is activated, users are always prompted for passwords when they launch a client application. In addition, an industrystandard algorithm (AES fixed key) is now used by default to encrypt passwords in metadata. If you don t have SAS/SECURE software, SASProprietary encoding is used instead. 8
A new type of user account that exists only in metadata. These accounts, called internal accounts, are used primarily to connect to the SAS Metadata Server. This feature minimizes the need to create external accounts for service identities. SAS token authentication. This feature enables users who have been authenticated by the SAS Metadata Server to access most other SAS servers without being prompted again for credentials. Support for Integrated Windows authentication. If you implement this option, users do not receive a logon prompt when they launch desktop applications such as SAS Data Integration Studio, SAS Enterprise Guide, SAS Information Map Studio, SAS Management Console and SAS OLAP Cube Studio. The client and the metadata server must be in the same Windows domain or in domains that trust each other. Better integration with third-party products on the middle tier. Web authentication is now supported for JBoss, Oracle WebLogic and IBM WebSphere, and all Web authentication occurs through a central authentication service. Interaction with WebSeal and SiteMinder is supported. In addition, you can configure client certification for one-way and two-way SSL authentication. A faster process for importing user identity information. You can now load this information into the metadata in blocks using the MDUIMPLB and MDUCHGLB macros. (The corresponding macros from the previous release are still supported.) For more information about these and other enhancements, see What s New in Security Administration for the SAS 9.2 Intelligence Platform on http://support.sas.com. Enhancements to analytics software SAS Enterprise Miner software SAS Enterprise Miner 6.1 is a major new release of data mining tools for use with SAS 9.2. The enhancements include the following: Improvements to variable list tables. These tables now include summary statistics. In addition, when configuring variable list table displays, you can now select only the variable attributes that are important to your work. Greater integration with the SAS 9.2 infrastructure, including use of the SAS Folders tree to store projects and models. You can register models directly to the tree structure and then use the Model Import node to import a registered model into a data mining process flow diagram. The score code of the imported model is applied to the data in the diagram, generating new model assessment statistics. 9
A switch-targets feature that enables you to select a new dependent variable in a tree leaf and make new splits based on the new target. This is a powerful analytical feature for users who design decision trees for segmentation strategies. In addition, the Interactive Decision Tree is now fully integrated into the application and requires no separate installation or documentation. New File Import and LARS nodes. With the File Import node, you can directly integrate external data files into process flow diagrams. The LARS node uses least angle regression and LASSO algorithms from the SAS/STAT procedure GLMSELECT to perform model-fitting tasks and sophisticated variable selection for interval target models. Many enhancements to existing nodes. For example, the Reporter node provides new ODS functions that create document graphs, process flow diagrams and analytical plots that match the graphics that are displayed in the user interface. SAS/ETS software The PANEL procedure expands the estimation capability of the TSCSREG procedure in the time-series cross-sectional framework. The new methods include between estimators, pooled estimators and dynamic panel estimators using the GMM method. The COUNTREG procedure implements count data models such as Poisson regression, negative binomial regression with linear and quadratic variance functions, zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) model and the zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) model. The new SIMILARITY (experimental) procedure provides similarity analysis of time series data. The new ESM procedure provides forecasting using exponential smoothing models with optimized smoothing weights. In addition, the SASEHAVR interface engine is now in production and available to Windows users for accessing economic and financial data residing in a HAVER ANALYTICS Data Link Express (DLX) database. SAS/Genetics software SAS/Genetics software includes two new experimental procedures, the BTL procedure and the GENESELECT procedure. Several enhancements have been made to the ALLELE procedure. A format of genotype columns not previously supported can now be accommodated by the ALLELE, CASECONTROL, FAMILY and HAPLOTYPE procedures. 10
SAS/IML software SAS/IML Studio (formerly known as SAS Stat Studio) is software for data exploration and analysis. It is included with SAS/IML software and provides a highly flexible programming environment where you can run SAS/STAT or SAS/IML analyses and display the results with dynamically linked graphics and data tables. SAS/IML Studio is intended for data analysts who write SAS programs to solve statistical problems but need more versatility for data exploration and model building. The programming language in SAS/IML Studio, which is called IMLPlus, is an enhanced version of the IML programming language. IMLPlus extends SAS/IML to provide new language features, including the ability to create and manipulate statistical graphics, call SAS procedures as functions and call computational programs written in C, C++, Java and FORTRAN. This software also includes an interface to the R language. SAS/IML Studio runs on a PC in the Microsoft Windows operating environment. SAS/OR software SAS/OR 9.2 software continues the mathematical optimization improvements delivered in previous releases. Several new and enhanced features, including a new suite of accelerated solvers for linear, mixed-integer, quadratic and general nonlinear optimization, expand the scale and scope of problems that SAS/OR software can address. The OPTMODEL procedure provides an algebraic language designed for building and solving optimization models, embedded within the SAS language. The new OPTLP, OPTMILP and OPTQP procedures enable the direct solution of linear, mixed-integer and quadratic optimization models represented in industry-standard formats. SAS/OR 9.2 software also features the first production versions of the GA procedure (for optimization with genetic algorithms), the Earned Value Management macros (for evaluating and predicting performance in executing project schedules) and SAS Simulation Studio (for discrete event simulation of systems). SAS/QC software Creating consistent output is easier now that the ANOM, CAPABILITY, CUSUM, MACONTROL, PARETO, RELIABILITY and SHEWHART procedures produce graphs that conform to ODS styles. Also, with ODS Graphics (experimental in SAS/QC 9.2), you can obtain the highest quality output with minimal syntax and full compatibility with graphics produced by SAS/STAT and SAS/ETS procedures. The SAS ADX Interface for Design of Experiments includes enhancements related to response surface mixture, general factorial and split-plot designs. Furthermore, the interface can now import data from SAS data sets or external file formats, and it can export design information to SAS data sets or external file formats. 11
SAS/STAT software SAS 9.2 brings several new procedures to SAS/STAT software, some of which were available as experimental Web downloads for SAS 9.1.3. The GLIMMIX procedure analyzes generalized linear mixed models. In SAS 9.2, PROC GLIMMIX introduces the COVTEST statement for inference about covariance parameters. It also provides two new estimation methods: Laplace and adaptive quadrature. The GLMSELECT procedure performs model selection in the framework of general linear models. The QUANTREG procedure performs quantile regression. The GENMOD, LIFEREG and PHREG procedures now provide Bayesian analysis. Specifying the BAYES statement produces posterior distributions via Gibbs sampling while also providing trace plots and convergence diagnostics. The MCMC procedure is a general-purpose Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation procedure that fits a variety of Bayesian models. The Power and Sample Size (PSS) application, previously available as a Web application, has been rewritten as a Java client. The SEQDESIGN and SEQTEST procedures provide interim analysis of clinical trials data. More than 200 enhancements to existing procedures greatly increase analysis capabilities. For example, the TTEST procedure now offers simple crossover analysis as well as equivalence tests; the GENMOD procedure provides zeroinflated Poisson regression models; the survey data analysis procedures include replication methods for variance estimation; and the PHREG procedure adds a HAZARDRATIO statement for computing hazard ratios, including hazard ratios in the presence of interactions. Enhancements to BI and data integration client applications (general) SAS clients can be Windows applications, Java applications or Web-based applications, and include SAS software components such as SAS Information Map Studio, SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office and SAS Web Report Studio in SAS Business Intelligence software; SAS Data Integration Studio (the GUI component of SAS Enterprise Data Integration Server and SAS Data Integration Server); and standalone products that may also be part of software bundles such as SAS Information Delivery Portal and SAS Enterprise Guide. 12
The client applications in SAS 9.2 include many enhancements that increase productivity, improve consistency and manageability, and provide better security. The following enhancements are common to most SAS 9.2 client applications: Expanded support for roles. With roles, you can manage the availability of application features such as menu items, plug-ins and buttons. This support is available in SAS Enterprise Guide; SAS Management Console (a component of base SAS software); SAS Web Report Studio and SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office (components of SAS Enterprise BI Server and SAS BI Server software); and other applications. Simplified management of profiles for connecting to the metadata server. Profiles are more consistent and are easier to add, modify and delete. Users now connect to the server rather than to a metadata repository. Administrators can now control whether users are able to save passwords in profiles. Consistent storage of metadata in the new SAS Folders tree. The tree appears in the SAS Management Console and other client applications as applicable. Personal folders are provided for individual users. Within the overall structure, you can create a customized folder structure to meet your data sharing and security requirements. A new prompt framework that offers greater functionality and flexibility. For relational data, prompts can be cascading and hierarchical. You can create prompts that use dynamically generated value lists and establish dependencies between prompts in a filter expression. When creating prompts for a stored process, you can make them globally available for use in filters. You can also create prompts for OLAP filters. New Export SAS Package and Import SAS Package wizards in SAS Management Console, SAS Data Integration Studio (a component of SAS Enterprise Data Integration Server and SAS Data Integration Server) and SAS OLAP Cube Studio (a component of SAS OLAP Server and SAS Enterprise BI Server). With these wizards, you can promote a larger number of object types than was possible with BI Manager. New batch import and export tools are also provided so that you can perform promotions from a command line or using a batch script. Use of the new SAS Pooled Workspace Server. This server uses serverside pooling, in which a collection of reusable workspace server processes is maintained, thus avoiding the overhead that is associated with creating a new process for each connection. Query and reporting tools, such as SAS Web Report Studio and the SAS Information Delivery Portal, use this server configuration by default to query relational information maps. 13
Enhancements to SAS Business Intelligence software clients SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office A component of SAS Enterprise BI Server and SAS BI Server, SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office enables users to transparently leverage the power of SAS data access, reporting and analytics directly from Microsoft Office. SAS 9.2 enhancements include: A new List Report wizard. You can use this wizard to quickly create detailed and summary reports. Alternatively, you can embed reports that were created in SAS Web Report Studio into your Microsoft Office files. Increased functionality when creating reports and graphs. When you create PivotTable reports using OLAP cube data, you can now add variables, calculated measures and calculated members. When creating bar charts, you can now define multiple chart variables within a single group variable. Bar-line charts can now include multiple line plots, with different line statistics for each plot. ODS Statistical Graphics are now supported, as are Fisher options for Pearson or Spearman correlations. An updated user interface. All SAS functions are displayed in logical groupings in the Microsoft Office ribbon bar for easy access. You can now preview results before they are inserted into Microsoft Excel, Word or PowerPoint, and you can restore content that you previously deleted or excluded. You can also save your settings for a specific task to a task template for later use in SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office or SAS Enterprise Guide. SAS BI Dashboard A component of SAS Enterprise BI Server and SAS BI Server, SAS BI Dashboard 4.2 includes the following enhancements: Powerful new functionality for users. New indicators, using Adobe Flash, enable users to traverse large amounts of detailed data interactively. For example, users can view changes in data over time by simply moving a slider. This eliminates the need to create multiple indicators for different time periods. In addition, you can now create alerts that signal changes to an indicator s value, enabling users to focus on problem areas as they occur. Better integration with other SAS software. When you link to a SAS Web Report Studio report, the report now opens to the area of the report where the indicator value is located. You can now use filters that were defined in SAS Information Map Studio, and you can create data sources based on tables registered in metadata. 14
SAS Information Delivery Portal The SAS Information Delivery Portal is a Web application that enables you to aggregate data from a variety of sources and present the data in a Web browser. It is included with SAS Enterprise BI Server and SAS BI Server, and it is also available as a separate SAS module for customers without SAS BI software. SAS Information Delivery Portal 9.2 includes the following enhancements: Report editing and viewing via SAS Web Report Studio. Depending on the software that has been installed, the portal uses SAS Web Report Studio instead of SAS Web Report Viewer to display reports. Reports that are displayed with SAS Web Report Studio can be edited from the portal by users who are authorized to do so. More control over sort order. The administrator can now specify default values for package sort order and page navigation. Users can set a preference to sort publication packages in ascending or descending order by creation date. This sort order can be overridden for specific publication channels that are in collection portlets. Other enhancements, including updated navigator portlets to comply with the new SAS metadata model, elimination of the Public Kiosk to comply with a stronger security model and a new default theme that is consistent with the theme used by other Web applications, such as SAS Web Report Studio. SAS Information Map Studio SAS Information Map Studio, a component of SAS Enterprise BI Server and SAS BI Server, enables data modelers and data architects to create and manage SAS Information Maps, which are business metadata about physical data. Information maps enable you to surface your data in terms that typical business users understand, while storing key information that is needed to build appropriate queries. SAS 9.2 enhancements include: A redesigned user interface. A new Resources pane provides a central location for all resources. You can now add a data source or stored process by doubleclicking it, using its pop-up menu option or dragging it to the Selected Resources pane. The new zoom feature on the tab in the main window displays more data sources in a single view. With the new auto-arrange feature, you can rearrange data sources so that they more closely resemble a star schema. An undo feature is also available. New features that increase productivity. With the new bulk edit feature, you can simultaneously modify multiple data items and custom properties. The new resource replacement feature enables you to replace resources that are unresolved or no longer relevant. 15
Enhanced filtering features. These include the ability to hide filters from end users, select multiple (nonprompted) filters for a test query and return the names of the user groups and roles that a requesting user belongs to. A new browseand-search feature locates the values (or members) for a character expression, an OLAP data item or a character data item whose value-generation method provides a dynamically generated list of values. Data-related enhancements. Information map tables can now be used as data sources. Data values that are hyperlink tags can now be rendered as hyperlinks in query results and support is now available for the totaling of nonadditive expressions. SAS OLAP Cube Studio SAS OLAP Cube Studio is the cube-building component of SAS OLAP Server (which is licensed as a standalone product and also is included in SAS Enterprise BI Server). SAS OLAP Cube Studio 4.2 includes the following enhancements: The ability to update and manage cubes using fewer hardware resources. In particular, the new incremental cube update feature enables you to add data and members to a cube without rebuilding the cube. This eliminates the time and resources required to rebuild cubes every time new data becomes available. New cube building features. You can now create multiple hierarchies for a dimension and designate one of them as the default. Time dimensions can be built with user-supplied time hierarchies that automatically populate levels and formats. With the new View Cube function, you can verify the cube-build process and visualize the data structure of a cube. In addition, cube jobs are now automatically generated when a cube is built. New and enhanced wizards. The Calculated Members wizard is now fully integrated with the application. It includes an advanced expression builder that enables you to specify user-defined formats, set the solve order and build a custom MDX formula. In addition, you can use the newly designed Aggregation Tuning wizard to build, edit and customize aggregations. Other new functionality, including performing impact analysis for a cube, synchronizing a cube when a table column name has changed, attaching documents and notes to a cube, disabling a cube, and exporting and importing cubes as part of a SAS package. SAS Web Report Studio SAS Web Report Studio is a Web-based application that enables you to create, view and organize reports, and is a component of SAS Enterprise BI Server and SAS BI Server. SAS Web Report Studio includes the following enhancements in SAS 9.2: 16
An updated user interface that provides a more traditional desktop application experience. You can now drag and drop data source items to your reports and graphs, and you can drag the borders of objects to resize them. Context-sensitive menus are now available by right-clicking. When viewing reports, users in the appropriate role can add group breaks, change the data items in a section query and delete objects. A new progress indicator displays while reports are being rendered and partial screen refresh is now supported. More powerful filtering and linking features. A new search feature in the Filter dialog box lets you quickly filter large amounts of detailed data. You can define multiple filter conditions for a data item, filter numeric category data items by unformatted data values and display data source filters that are based on physical columns. You can now link to a specific report section from the same report or a different report. In addition, you can link directly to a SAS Stored Process, include hyperlinks in stored process output for graphs and add data-driven hyperlinks to tables. Updated graph features. You can now add vertical and horizontal reference lines to charts with annotations. On bar-line charts, you can include multiple lines, multiple bars or both. The ability to create tile charts has also been added. Other enhancements, including improved support for totals and for multidimensional data sources, a new default report style, bookmarks in PDF output, new page fit and page numbering options, and more flexible margin settings. Enhancements to SAS Data Integration software clients SAS Data Integration Studio The GUI component of SAS Enterprise Data Integration Server and SAS Data Integration Server, SAS Data Integration Studio 4.2 includes the following enhancements: An updated user interface for creating and maintaining jobs. New zoom and pan features enable you to view large process flows more easily. You can use the overview pane to view the overall flow or use the details panel to view node details. Post-it notes can be added to diagrams. When a job is reopened, the layout appears in the same state as when it was last saved. Usability enhancements that improve the job creation process. You can use a table more than once in the same job, you can include a job within a job, and you can import your existing data management code into a job. The new undo feature enables you to reverse an action, and the redo feature enables you to reverse an undo operation. 17
Enhanced mapping features. These features include intelligent handling of data type conversions, easy and selectable customized mappings, and controlled propagation of changes to mappings. New debugging features to use when designing and running jobs. Customized design-time diagnostics inform you about design errors as you build the process flow for a job. Run-time indicators display job progress and provide status, errors and warnings while the job is still running. A debug toolbar includes Run, Stop, Run To/From Selected Transformation, Step and Continue functions. You can restart jobs from any node or from the middle of a load. Performance monitoring capabilities that help you identify bottlenecks. You can capture and display CPU time, memory use, I/O statistics and record counts in both tabular and graphic formats. Honoring of login settings for databases such as Oracle and DB2. This means that if a DBMS is configured to always prompt for user name and password, SAS Data Integration software honors this setting. You can now register Netezza and Neoview tables and include them in SAS Data Integration Studio jobs. In addition, a fast technique for change data capture (CDC) now reads changes for Oracle, IBM DB2 and Attunity data. You can also create custom data formats for change data capture. Other data integration software enhancements SAS 9.2 also includes new features for accessing and managing your organization s data. New DataFlux software has been added to SAS Enterprise Data Integration Server and SAS Data Integration Server. Both of these offerings include DataFlux dfpower Profile, which can execute a complete assessment of your organization s data. SAS Enterprise Data Integration Server includes DataFlux dfpower Explorer, which can be used to analyze metadata from existing data sources. It also includes a version of DataFlux Standard Integration Server specifically for use with SAS. You can visually design data quality workflows using DataFlux dfpower Studio and then call those workflows from within SAS Data Integration Studio using new drag-anddrop data quality transformations. 18
Enhancements to SAS Enterprise Guide SAS Enterprise Guide is a project-oriented Windows application that is designed to enable quick access to much of the analytic power of SAS software for SAS business analysts, SAS programmers and SAS statisticians. It includes the following enhancements: A significantly simplified user interface. The options on menus and toolbars now change according to the task you are performing so that you see only the options that relate to the current task. The user interface makes it easier to specify a data source and, when doing so, to create a simple or advanced filter and specify a sort order. When creating projects, you can use new conditional nodes to define conditional logic without writing code. Improvements to the Query Builder. These improvements make it easier to define filters, create computed and recoded columns and build expressions. When you join DBMS tables, PROC SQL Pass-Through statements are now validated. In addition, you can specify titles and footnotes for query output. Enhancements similar to those in the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office. These include a new List Report wizard, bar chart and bar-line chart features, support for ODS Statistical Graphics and support of Fisher options for Pearson or Spearman correlations. Other new functionality, including the ability to create a tile chart so that you can view a large quantity of hierarchical data in a limited space. You can also create a report of table definitions in metadata, export SAS reports to HTML, send files to the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office, download files to your computer and upload files to a SAS server. 19
Installing, configuring and migrating to SAS 9.2 Installation and configuration enhancements The following enhancements make installation and configuration of SAS 9.2 software significantly easier and faster: The new SAS Download Manager enables you to download your SAS order by using an HTTP connection over the Internet. The new SAS Deployment Wizard combines installation and configuration into a single process. The wizard prompts for user entries and checks for required software at the beginning. Installation and configuration then run silently and unattended. A capture-replay feature makes it easy to automate deployment across multiple machines. If your configuration includes SAS servers, the SAS Deployment Wizard configures the servers automatically. When you install SAS Web applications, you can choose to have the wizard configure your Web server and deploy the applications. The number of manual steps has been greatly reduced, as has the number of required user accounts. Running SAS 9.2 and SAS 9.1.3 on the same machine It is possible to run SAS 9.2 and SAS 9.1.3 simultaneously on the same computer. You must be sure to create a separate software depot and install the software in separate locations. In configurations that include SAS servers, you must use different TCP/IP port numbers. For important details and considerations, see Peaceful coexistence for SAS 9.2 and SAS 9.1.3 at http://support.sas.com/rnd/migration/ papers/peaceful.html. 20
Moving metadata and other content to SAS 9.2 If your configuration includes a metadata server, you will need to move and upgrade your content (including data, metadata, configuration details and business logic) from SAS 9.1.3 to SAS 9.2. Comprehensive tools are provided to perform this task. You can choose from the following three approaches: With the migration approach, you begin by running the SAS Migration Utility. This utility creates a migration package that contains your SAS 9.1.3 content. Then you run the SAS Deployment Wizard. The wizard uses the contents of the migration package to configure and populate your SAS 9.2 deployment. This approach moves and upgrades the following content: metadata for servers, users, groups and access control templates (ACTs); configuration and deployment properties for Web applications; some configuration files for SAS servers; and all SAS content that is stored in metadata and WebDAV. With the promotion approach, you first use the SAS Deployment Wizard to create a SAS 9.2 deployment. Then you use promotion tools (Import SAS Package and Export SAS Package wizards) to export content from SAS 9.1.3 and import it to SAS 9.2. You can use this approach to move and upgrade metadata, WebDAV content and physical files for the following object types: data explorations, documents, external files, folders, generated transformations, information maps, job flows, jobs, libraries, mining results, notes, reports, scheduled jobs, stored processes and tables. A process for moving and upgrading OLAP cubes is also provided. With a combination approach, you first use the migration approach to build your initial SAS 9.2 deployment. While running the two deployments in parallel, you use promotion tools to periodically refresh the SAS 9.2 deployment with new and updated content. To use any of these approaches, you must be using SAS 9.1.3 Service Pack 4. In addition, you should ensure that SAS 9.2 versions of all of your SAS software are available. The SAS Intelligence Platform: 9.1.3 to 9.2 Migration Guide on http:// support.sas.com provides details to help you plan an upgrade process that is appropriate for your situation. The guide also describes important preparation steps and post-upgrade steps. 21
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