Architecture of the SAS Intelligence Platform

The SAS Intelligence Platform is designed to efficiently access large amounts of data, while simultaneously providing timely intelligence to a large number of users. SAS Intelligence Platform uses an n-tier architecture that enables you to distribute functionality across computer resources, so that each type of work is performed by the resources that are most suitable for the job.

A tier in the SAS architecture represents a conceptual category of software components that perform similar types of computing tasks and that require similar types of resources. Different tiers do not necessarily represent separate computers or groups of computers. More than one computer can be used for a specified tier as well.

You can modify the SAS architecture to meet the demands of your workload. For a large company, the architecture can easily consist of many computers with different operating environments. For prototyping, demonstrations, or very small enterprises, the components for all of the tiers can be installed on a single computer.

The architecture of the SAS Intelligence Platform consists of the following tiers.

Client	The client tier provides users with access to intelligence data and to functionality through web-based interfaces.
Middle	The middle tier provides an environment in which the SAS Business Rules Manager web application can execute. The middle-tier applications rely on servers on the SAS server tier to perform SAS processing, including data query and analysis.
SAS Server	The SAS server tier includes the SAS Metadata Server and several compute servers that execute SAS analytical and reporting processes for distributed clients. The compute servers include the SAS OLAP Server, the SAS Workspace Server, the SAS Pooled Workspace Server, and the SAS Stored Process Server. The SAS object spawner process runs on server machines and handles requests for SAS Workspace Servers, SAS Pooled Workspace Servers, and SAS Stored Process Servers.
Data	The data tier stores your enterprise data. All of your existing data assets can be used, whether your data is stored in relational database management systems, SAS tables, or enterprise resource planning system (ERP) tables.

For more information about the SAS Intelligence Platform, see SAS Intelligence Platform: Overview at http://support.sas.com/documentation/onlinedoc/intellplatform/index.html.