| For those of you who haven't seen SAS in a few | | | | multi-dimensional reporting |
| years get ready for some culture shock. SAS has | | | | - Add-in For Microsoft Office: Extend the abilities |
| extended its flagship programming language with | | | | of Excel, Word and Powerpoint to access SAS |
| all of its lovable procs and data steps into a | | | | reports, data and procedures |
| web-enabled reporting and data management | | | | Anyone who has used the SAS display manager |
| juggernaut. | | | | interface to write their SAS code in the past |
| Before you go and get all bent out of shape that | | | | should feel pretty comfortable with Enterprise |
| your good old-fashioned SAS skills are obsolete - | | | | Guide (EG as it is known to its friends). Although |
| don't worry. Base SAS coding can still be used in | | | | EG is designed so that any user can point-and-click |
| several places and through various components of | | | | their way to building complex SAS programs, it |
| the EBI suite - more on that later. | | | | still allows the old-fashioned coder to open up a |
| First you might wonder how the EBI suite is | | | | code module and submit SAS procedures and |
| packaged. Essentially it is a server-based product | | | | data steps just like days of yore. |
| that comes equipped with several small-footprint | | | | The main drawback that I've found in EG |
| dot net and java clients. The main portion of the | | | | compared to old-fashioned PC-SAS is that you |
| server piece is essentially a souped-up version of | | | | don't have as much control of your libraries. With |
| the old fashioned SAS. The idea is to make use | | | | EG, typically all of the libraries now sit on the |
| of serious server hardware for all of the number | | | | server so the concept of creating or accessing a |
| crunching and resource intensive tasks and to | | | | SAS library on your C drive is impossible. You can |
| enable centralized management of SAS. All of | | | | open individual SAS data sets, spreadsheets, etc. |
| these various bits and pieces are controllable by a | | | | from your local drive but you must use Windows |
| SAS administrator through a little java application | | | | folders (not libraries) to organize them. Note that |
| known as the SAS Management Console. | | | | EG can be configured to work with a local copy |
| In conjunction with the server piece several thin | | | | of SAS - in which case you can create local |
| clients are provided as part of the package. | | | | libraries. Such a local setup is not typical and |
| Those clients include: | | | | usually not cost-effective with respect to SAS |
| - Enterprise Guide: Windows-based | | | | licensing fees. |
| code-generating reporting and analysis tool | | | | I've touched on some aspects of Enterprise Guide |
| - Web Report Studio: Web enabled report writer | | | | but it is worthy of a full review. I will provide |
| - Information Map Studio: Enables 'views' of data | | | | more details of EG as well as the other thin clients |
| for business users - shields them from technical | | | | in future articles. |
| nitty-gritty | | | | Overall the SAS Enterprise BI Suite is an |
| - Information Delivery Portal: One stop shop for | | | | effective tool to manage, analyze and share |
| users to get their SAS and other reports | | | | enterprise data. It works equally well for shops |
| - Data Integration Studio: Another code-generating | | | | that have been running legacy SAS for decades |
| tool to manage data warehouse building tasks | | | | as well as for shops that have never used SAS |
| - Olap Cube Studio: Tool to build cubes for | | | | before. |