SAS Platform Admin Blog

Migrating or Promoting users In this article you will find the step by step procedure to migrate user from one environment to other in SAS 9.4. In this tutorial I have migrated users from Test Environment to Production Environment. Here I am doing partial promotion as only user is migrated. For partial promotion, we can do using Export SAS Package, Import SAS Package wizards and batch tools. In this tutorial I have used Export/Import SAS package method. Let’s start the tutorial. In Test Environment – Exporting SAS Package Open SAS Management Console, and click on the Folders tab. Expand the folder System . Inside the System folder you will find a folder named as Security (white in color) where all the security related objects like Access Control Template, Authentication Domains, Roles, User Groups and User. Tip: While migration, you will always wonder which object to migrate first. Always remember to migrate as in the folder hierarchy. See the below image. Security ...

Repository in SAS A repository stores information about your data in physical path or directory. The actual tables are not stored in the repository instead it data about the tables are stored in repository tables. The data about the tables will be table attributes like label, library, type and column attributes like name, length, type, format etc SAS Repository Anatomy The above image shows, every time we register a new table, it gets registered in the repository. The same table can be registered in one or more repository.   Image Reference: SAS® Guide to Applications Development Metadata Repository Metadata Repository is a library of tables in which a collection of related metadata objects is stored. It is managed by a repository manager. They are stored in physical location. Below is the snapshot of the metadata repositories in physical location. In the above image accentry, accsscn0, caset, cmap etc are the library of tables. All theses table metadata object a...

As a new user to SAS I always wonder what is metadata. Immediate answer that cross my mind is data about data. In SAS, metadata is a pointer to an external content. Okay, then where is the content? Where they are stored? This article focus about all the metadata objects in SAS and their physical location. Note : Physical refers to the location (computer or server) where file is stored. Metadata Objects in SAS I have seen many SAS admins work with metadata objects, still they didn't learn that they are working with metadata object. If you are one such user below is the list of SAS Metadata Objects in SAS. Metadata Objects and their physical location Folder object It is used to organize data in hierarchy. It doesn't have physical location. It is a virtual view data organized in hierarchy. Library object Library object holds the connection information and physical library location. It also have the libref or nickname of the library. Physically it is collection...

In my previous article, you might have learnt that we need to start SAS Deployment Agent service to run SAS Deployment backup and recovery tool batch commands. So in this article lets focus how exactly to start the service in Windows and Linux environment. Note: This article is applicable only for SAS 9.4 as this backup tool is introduced in SAS 9.4 version. Starting SAS Deployment Agent service in Windows: It is easy to do this in windows since you can see all the services in Windows Services. Open Windows Services and check the status of SAS Deployment Agent . It should be either stopped or running. If it is stopped then start it. If you are not sure how to launch Windows Services, then open Run -> type services.msc in the text box. This will launch you the Windows Services window. Starting SAS Deployment Agent service in Linux: In Linux you can check whether the service is running or not by giving ps -ef command. This will show the list of all running process. Y...

Integrated Windows Authentication is one of the commonly used authentication service if SAS Platform runs on Windows server. In this article let's see what happens behind the scene when your SAS platform authenticate using IWA. Connection Using Integrated Windows Authentication Let's see what happens in each step that is shown in above image. 1. User attempts to login in SAS client application which can be SAS Management Console Or SAS Enterprise Guide. In the process user will provide the user ID and password. The credential is passed to Windows. 2. Windows will check whether the user ID and password combination is right or wrong. It will authenticate and provides a token to SAS application (SAS EG) if the combination correct. 3. SAS application will send the token to Metadata Server. It doesn't send user's password to Metadata Server, only token is sent. 4. Metadata Server needs user id for authentication. So it sends the token to Windows and asks f...

You have already learned that SAS applications connect to Metadata Server . Here you can get to know about how actually this happens. As a user we know that we give our credentials and then boom we get connected. But admin should be aware how it happens behind the scene, so that he/she can diagonise in case of connectivity issue. Connection to SAS Metadata Server The above diagram shows the flow of how SAS client applications connect to Metadata Server. I will describe each step below. 1. Say, you are now login to SAS Management Console, you give user ID and the password. This happens in the first step. 2. The username and password is passed to Metadata Server. Metadata Server then passes it to Authentication Provider. The authentication provider may be the host machine or LDAP or Microsoft Active Directory. So the authentication is not done by Metadata Server. It just acts as a intermediate to SAS and authentication provider. Note: SAS doesn't know about authentication...

I am sure that Metadata Server is the most spoken word by SAS Admin. Every day we deal with Metadata Server. Let's see what is the role of Metadata Server in SAS platform and why it is so important. SAS Metadata Server: All the SAS client applications connect to Metadata Server. SAS Management Console, Enterprise Guide, Information Map Studio, OLAP Cube Studio, Data Integration Studio are few examples of SAS client applications. It manages the metadata that contains the location and structure of SAS platform. The main role of Metadata is to read and write metadata. In SAS, Metadata means server definition, data definition, users and groups, security settings and BI content. When you open SAS Management Console you can see several plugins and their object. Those objects are nothing but metadata which is shown in graphical manner. I hope you might have done user addition. When you add a user, metadata server gets invoked and it write those details in metadata. Metadata will be...

In my previous post I talked about backup facility in SAS 9.4 . If you read that post, you might now know that SAS 9.4 uses Deployment Backup and Recovery tool for backup and restore. Also I have mentioned that it is a command line tool. Lets see how to use this tool to list of scheduled backup in the server running SAS 9.4. As backup is routine/planned activity you will schedule it. Most of the time you just need to know when the backup activity is scheduled. Command to get scheduled backup: In Windows - sas-list-backup-schedule.exe -host <hostname> -port <port number> -user <username> -password <password of the user> In Linux - ./sas-list-backup-schedule -host <hostname> -port <port number> -user <username> -password <password of the user> How to run this command? In Linux: 1. Verify that SAS Deployment agent is running. If not, then navigate to installation directory by issuing below command cd /< installation dir...

In SAS 9.4, we use Deployment Backup and Recovery tool to take backup. I know the tool name sounds complex but believe me it's not. SAS recommends to consider the below points before taking backup. Do full backups regularly If you are going to make any changes in config file or any major changes, then do backup before and after change.  Make sure the backup directory is reachable. What do you backup? In SAS 9.4, you do backup for: Metadata repository SAS Content Server SAS Web Infrastructure Platform Data Server PostgresSQL databases Configuration directory In above list, metadata repository and configuration directory are pretty straight forward. You deal with them everyday. What is SAS Content Server? I know this sounds alien. In SAS Content server we have metadata objects like contents of SAS Information Delivery Portal, report definitions, report dependant files (PDF, image and other contents. You can see those contents in SAS Management Console Folders ta...

SAS configuration files are stored in operating system. Those files should be secured using operating system security features such as ACL/chmod in Linux and Security option in Windows. SAS doesn't provide security to configuration files. You cannot bound the files with metadata security. The security of SAS config files are purely OS dependent. SAS Admin should plan whom should they give access to the configuration directory. Usually, users will be added to groups depending on the role. For example, add all user who need full access to admin group and add all user who need basic access for navigating directory to developer group. Find more about configuration directory here . Why security is needed for config directory? In configuration directory, there will be have important contents of SAS like: Metadata repository datasets (dataset is nothing but a table in SAS). Metadata repository datasets stores information about metadata objects like users, groups etc in form of tab...