Understanding the SAS Application Server

Overview of SAS Application Servers

When the SAS Intelligence Platform was installed at your site, a metadata object that represents the SAS server tier in your environment was defined. In the SAS Management Console interface, this type of object is called a SAS Application Server. By default, the application server object is named SASApp.

Note: In SAS deployments before SAS 9.2, the default SAS application server is named SASMain. [cautionend]

You can view the properties of this object by using the Server Manager plug-in to SAS Management Console. Expand the Server Manager tree node. Then right-click the SASApp node, and select Properties from the pop-up menu. You can also see the server components that make up the application server by completely expanding the SASApp node in the Server Manager tree.

In addition to this metadata object, a SASApp directory was created on each machine that hosts a SAS server (under the SAS configuration directory). This directory contains important files that you will use in the management of your SAS Application Server. In particular, it contains a file called sasv9.cfg, a configuration file that is used in the start-up of most SAS servers.

A Collection of Server Components

A SAS Application Server is not an actual server that can execute SAS code submitted by clients. Rather, it is a logical container for a set of application server components, which do execute code. Typically, these components execute SAS code, although some components can execute Java code or MDX queries. For example, a SAS Application Server might contain a standard workspace server and a pooled workspace server, which can execute SAS code that is generated by clients such as SAS Data Integration Studio or SAS Web Report Studio. A SAS Application Server might also contain a stored process server, which executes SAS Stored Processes, and an OLAP server which executes and processes multidimensional expressions language (MDX) code to query a cube. If SAS runs on multiple machines, the SAS application might contain a SAS/CONNECT Server, which can upload or download data and execute SAS code submitted from a remote machine.

For a complete list of application server components, see The SAS Application Server's Server Components.

A Server Context

A SAS Application Server knows its server context (the context in which it is being used) and makes decisions based on that knowledge. For example, a client such as SAS Data Integration Studio is assigned a default SAS Application Server, and when the client generates code, it submits the code to that application server. The application server determines what type of code is being submitted and directs it to the correct server. That is, if the code is typical SAS code that could be run in the SAS Display Manager, the code is executed by the application server's workspace server.

In addition, data-related objects such as SAS libraries, database libraries, and OLAP schemas can be assigned to a SAS application server. Once this assignment is made, if a client needs to access data in a particular library or OLAP schema, it uses a server component belonging to the application server to which the library or schema has been assigned.

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