What's New in Web Application Administration for the SAS 9.3 Intelligence Platform

The content promotion tool includes a new build.properties file. When promoting portal content from a SAS 9.1.3 environment to a SAS 9.3 or SAS 9.2 environment, the values for certain parameters in this file are modified to ensure that the appropriate metadata repository ID and the names of the internal accounts for sasadm and sastrust are specified to prepare the target system.

An additional upgradeMetadata command is used when promoting a Portal Application Tree or a portlet instance to a target SAS 9.3 system from a source system with SAS 9.1.3 or SAS 9.2.

Message logging is accomplished with logging contexts that are added to the SASportal-log4j file.

Messages that are displayed at the top of pages and in the title bar of portlets can be hidden by specifying two new properties and their values in SAS Management Console.

A content promotion tool is provided. This tool consists of stand-alone batch scripts, shell scripts, and metadata extraction templates. These scripts and templates use the metadata server's import and export capabilities to promote portal metadata.

SAS BI Portlets are displayed with the Flex interface.

You can alert users by displaying a warning message before they are logged out of their inactive sessions. For information about using this feature, see SAS Intelligence Platform: Middle-Tier Administration Guide.

You can choose to enable unchallenged access to the portal. Users can then access the portal and interact with selected content without providing a user ID and password. The option is similar to the Public Kiosk feature in the SAS 9.1.3 release of the SAS Information Delivery Portal.

A Diagnostics Portlet enables you to view information about the portal's environment.

Bookmarks and data explorations are not supported.

All data explorations are migrated to SAS Web Report Studio 4.31 reports. However, users can still use the search capabilities within SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.31 to find those reports, as well as information maps.

SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.31 includes a new Report Portlet that displays SAS Web Report Studio 4.31 reports.

During software updates, the SAS Information Delivery Portal converts instances of the Information Map Viewer portlet to the new Report Portlet.

Visual Data Explorer is not available to display information maps.

SAS 9.3 supports SAS BI Portlets on WebSphere 7 application server and WebSphere Portal Server 7. This document contains updated instructions for deploying these portlets to WebSphere 7.

The SAS BI Dashboard portlet is a new addition to the suite of SAS BI Portlets.

The Diagnostics portlet is a new portlet that enables you to determine the current status of the portal's environment.

The SAS Collection Portlet, which is included in the suite of SAS BI Portlets and is compliant with JSR 168, does not allow users to search for data explorations. All data explorations are migrated to SAS Web Report Studio 4.31 reports. Users can, however, search for information maps in SAS BI Portlets.

You can specify a company preferred folder that serves as a default folder for saving users’ reports.

To prevent users from exporting entire reports, you can configure and remove the Export option under the File menu and the Export toolbar button.

You can enable the display of a report and filter name in the exported data.

You can determine how prompt values are saved in reports. The wrs.save.promptValues.option property enables you to specify one of three values that are valid for this property. The value that you specify for this property determines how prompt values are saved in reports.

You can enable the display of standard text in an e-mail sent by a user from within the application. This is useful if you want a standard text message to precede the URL for the report in the e-mail. Or, you can customize the e-mail message by specifying the location of the URL within the standard text in the e-mail.

Users can specify a preferred locale in SAS Preferences Manager. The locale specified in SAS Preferences Manager is applied to SAS Web Report Studio.

The locale preference that is specified by users in SAS Preferences Manager is applied to all reports that are scheduled via Platform Suite for SAS or SAS In-process scheduling for SAS Web Report Studio.

A user can open a SAS Web Report Studio report, make modifications that are saved in a report definition snapshot, and e-mail the URL for the report definition snapshot to a recipient. The report definition snapshot is always associated with the original report, but the original report remains unchanged when the report definition snapshot is created and e-mailed. If the original report is deleted, any report definition snapshots that are associated with that original report are automatically deleted.

A maximum of 50 report definition snapshots can be created from a SAS Web Report Studio report. You can increase the number of report definition snapshots that are created from an existing report by configuring the wrs.numEmailSnapshotsMax property. This property enables you to specify the maximum number of report definition snapshots for each SAS Web Report Studio report.

You can enable the display of table name, graph name, and filter information in data that is exported into either Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel.

Message logging is accomplished with logging contexts that are added to the SASwrs-log4j file.

Folders for images, templates, and items for report distribution for users now reside within the /SASWebReportStudio/Common folder. Previously, these folders were located within the /SAS Folders/System/Applications/SAS Web Report Studio/Web Report Studio 4.2 folder.

By default, clustering is enabled.

By default, in-process scheduling is supported in a clustered environment. An in-process scheduling server runs as a process inside SAS Web Report Studio. This process eliminates the need to send jobs to an external scheduling server.

SAS Web Report Studio 4.31 has 30 UDP ports available for use by the application. These ports are in the range of 7560 to 7589.

An event is logged in the WebReportStudio_KeyActions.log file when a user creates, edits, or deletes a distribution list.

Details about SAS Web Report Studio users' logon and logoff information from sessions can be viewed conveniently in the WebReportStudio_KeyActions.log file.

You can specify a different directory (other than the default directory) where the Key User Action log files can be saved.

You can specify whether the display of the left pane in SAS Web Report Studio window should depend on the user's preferences during the previous logon session.

Two new capabilities have been added to SAS Web Report Studio 4.31 and SAS Web Report Viewer 4.31: Allow Direct Access to Cubes and Allow Direct Access to Tables. The Allow Direct Access to Cubes capability is included by default in the following roles: Web Report Studio: Report Creation, Web Report Studio: Advanced, and Web Report Viewer: Advanced.

The Open Maps as Reports capability has been renamed to Allow Direct Access to Information Maps. In addition, the Repair Report capability has been renamed to Update Resources. For sites that upgrade from SAS Web Report Studio 4.2, the names of these capabilities will remain the same.

New styles are available for reports.

The Distribute Report Wizard includes new features.

SAS Web Report Studio reports can be scheduled only by regular users with a SAS identity. SAS internal accounts cannot be used to schedule reports.

The optional trusted parameter is not available in the Report Output Generation tool.

To distribute reports with the Report Output Generation tool in environments with multihomed machines, the Outputgen.ini file should be updated to include the -Djgroups.bind_addr command.

Reports can be scheduled only by regular users with a metadata identity. SAS internal accounts such as the SAS Trusted User cannot be used to schedule reports.

Bookmarks and data explorations are not supported.

All data explorations are migrated to SAS Web Report Studio 4.31 reports. You can still use the search capabilities within SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.31 to find those reports, as well as, the information maps.

The migration tool creates a copy of the original data explorations and bookmarks, and places them in the same location where the original content resided.

Visual Data Explorer is not available to display information maps in SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.31.

In Edit mode within the portal, users can select a SAS Web Report Studio report instead of a data exploration.

The SAS Collection Portlet, which is included in the suite of SAS BI Portlets and is compliant with JSR 168, does not allow users to search for data explorations. All data explorations are migrated to SAS Web Report Studio 4.31 reports. Users can, however, search for information maps.

Using the Export SAS Package and Import SAS Package wizards provided by the SAS Intelligence Platform, you can promote individual metadata objects or groups of objects in SAS BI Dashboard 4.31 from one server to another or within the same metadata server.

The frequency with which the data cache is inspected for caching updates can be configured and customized for your environment by supplying a custom value for the configuration property in SAS Management Console.

Two new configuration properties are available for data caching. The values for these configuration properties can be customized in SAS Management Console. These values enable you to determine the frequency with which configuration objects or dashboard objects are updated in the cache.

Message logging is accomplished with logging contexts that are added to the SASBIDashboard-log4j file.

Storage folders for SAS BI Dashboard 4.31 now exist in both the foundation SAS Metadata Repository and the SAS Content Server or the file system.

Users' folders for SAS BI Dashboard 4.31 can be located anywhere below the SAS Folders directory on the Folders tab of SAS Management Console. Previously, in SAS BI Dashboard 4.2, you were required to use predefined storage folders. This is no longer the case.

Configuration files for SAS BI Dashboard 4.31 are stored on the SAS Content Server. Previously, all files were stored in a file system.

You can use the SAS Content Server Administration Console to manage SAS BI Dashboard 4.31 files and WebDAV folders in the SAS Content Server.

You can enable users to log on, view, and interact with a dashboard by creating metadata identities for the users.

You can register a stored process and make it available to SAS BI Dashboard 4.31 users.

Three types of caching are available: data caching, content caching, and client caching.

Data caching was available previously in SAS BI Dashboard 4.2. Beginning with SAS BI Dashboard 4.31, files for data caching are stored in the SAS Content Server.

Content caching, which is a new type of caching, is enabled by default in SAS BI Dashboard 4.31.

Client browsers that display dashboards with SAS BI Dashboard 4.31 use Adobe Flash Player (Version 10.0 or above) in the Rich Internet Application (RIA) architecture. Client caching is enabled by default.

Image files are no longer cached.

SAS BI Dashboard 4.31 supports the SAS Comment Manager. All users that can log on to the application can view and add comments. To be able to edit and delete comments, users or administrators must belong to the Comments:Administrator role.

DSX files are stored in the SAS Content Server.

DSX files are modified by exporting the DSX file from SAS Management Console, making necessary changes to the files, and importing the files.

The SAS BI Dashboard Portlet is installed along with the other SAS BI Portlets. This portlet allows users to display a dashboard that is created with the SAS BI Dashboard application. The configuration of this portlet is identical to the configuration of the SAS BI Portlets for the WebSphere Portal.

You can specify a session time-out interval for inactive user sessions.

You can alert users by displaying a warning message before they are logged out of their inactive sessions.