Sorting out SAS Addin and Pivot training for new users
Currently sorting out a resource to create training material for new users.
A lot of the clients users are unfamiliar with both Excel and the EDW Content, not to mention SAS.
So we are aiming for a simple user guide that shows users how to access Information Maps via Excel Pivots and another on how to access OLAP Cubes via Excel Pivot tables.
Then lastly a little more in-depth training material on how to use Excel Pivot tables with any sort of data.
Moving SAS Servers
Moving the SAS 9.2 environment from the old SAN based server to a new server with a dedicated disk array, to resolve some I/O issues under high load. Will be using shadow copy to automate the move across machines as it manages the swap out of drivers etc for the new hardware.
BI/DW Architecture
Currently working on a developing a BI/DW technical architecture to define how we will manage an environment with multiple ETL and Reporting tools.
Will feed into the Enterprise Information Management and Reporting Strategy we are working on.
Configuring SAS ROLAP – Solving Excel Pivot Size Issues
Had some issues with users using the SAS Addin for Microsoft Office against Info Maps where the size of the Excel file gets massive when you save it.
It seems Excel must be caching the data somewhere.
We are working on configuring SAS OLAP cubes in ROLAP mode as this removes the size issues with Excel.
Re-branding the Portal Theme
We are re-branding the project after the successful completion of decommissioning the old Data Warehouse environment at the end of the month. So we are currently changing the SAS Portal theme to match the new brand.
SAS 9.2 not supported on Windows 2008 R2 – yet!
Just found out Windows 2008 R2 is not currently supported for SAS 9.2, but it seems to work on the test install I did.
Making Reports Faster
We are using a combination of SAS Web Report Studio, for report creation/rendering and an Oracle database for data storage.
When users run reports, they effectively invoke this process:
- Connect to metadata and obtain authorisation
- Access info map and generate query
- Pass query to Oracle
- Oracle passes data to WRS
- WRS renders report
To make this faster we have been looking at configuring report scheduling to see if we can pre-cache the reports