Publishing Extension Tools

Overview

Extension nodes provide a mechanism for extending the functionality of SAS Enterprise Miner. Extension nodes can be developed to perform almost any essential data mining activity. In SAS Enterprise Miner, the essential data mining activities are divided into the following five groups: Sample, Explore, Modify, Model, and Assess (known as SEMMA). Although SAS Enterprise Miner is designed to satisfy the needs of a diverse audience, extension nodes provide you a means to develop custom solutions.
Each extension node consists of four files.
  • <extention_name>.sas7bcat — SAS code for the extension node.
  • <extention_name>.xml — Definition of the extension node for the graphical user interface.
  • <extention_name>_16.gif — A small, 16–bit gif file that serves as the extension node’s icon on the node toolbar.
  • <extention_name>_32.gif — A large, 32–bit gif file that serves as the extension node’s image in the diagram workspace.
The extension node files must be available to the SAS Server. It is recommended you create a folder accessible by everyone that will use the extension tool (for example EMEXT). You must add the XML file to the extension node folder and create two subdirectories in this folder named gif16 and gif32 to hold the 16- and 32-bit icons, respectively.
The SAS code for the extension node must be available to the SAS server. It is recommended that you put your code in catalog source entries. The path to the SAS code is stored in the extensions.xml file. If you add the path for your EMEXT folder to the SASHELP concatenation in the SAS system configuration file, then the catalogs in the EMEXT folder will be found by the server. Since the path to the SAS code is stored in the extensions.xml file, when creating your own extension node, you need to edit your extensions.xml file to specify your catalog and source entry.
An example extension node (EXT Demo) is part of SAS Enterprise Miner. See the SAS Help for SAS Enterprise Miner for details about EXT Demo.
For client/server configurations, the four files in the EXT Demo node are
  • SASHELP.EMUTIL.EXTDEMO.SOURCE
  • C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASEnterpriseMinerMidTier\12.1\Static\wars\sas.enterpriseminer.svcs\WEB-INF\classes\components\ExtDemo.xml
  • C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASEnterpriseMinerMidTier\12.1\Static\wars\sas.enterpriseminer.svcs\WEB-INF\classes\components\gif16\ExtDemo.gif
  • C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASEnterpriseMinerMidTier\12.1\Static\wars\sas.enterpriseminer.svcs\WEB-INF\classes\components\gif32\ExtDemo.gif
For workstation configurations, the four files in the EXT Demo node are
  • SASHELP.EMUTIL.EXTDEMO.SOURCE
  • C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASEnterpriseMinerWorkstationConfiguration\12.1\WEB-INF\classes\components\ExtDemo.xml
  • C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASEnterpriseMinerWorkstationConfiguration\12.1\WEB-INF\classes\components\gif16\ExtDemo.gif
  • C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASEnterpriseMinerWorkstationConfiguration\12.1\WEB-INF\classes\components\gif32\ExtDemo.gif

Workstation Extension

For Workstation configurations, if the EMEXT folder is created under User Home on Windows 7 (for example C:\User\<userid>\EMEXT), it will be found automatically. For any other location, define a system environment variable named dminemid.components.extra.dir that contains the path for the directory that contains the extension xml file. It can be any directory accessible from the machine.

Server Extensions

For a server configuration, specify the location of the extensions folder by adding a definition in the SAS Management Console. To add a definition, follow the steps below.
  1. Log on to the SAS Management Console as a SAS administrator.
  2. On the Plug-ins tab, select Application Managementthen selectConfiguration Managerthen selectSAS Application Infrastructure. Right-click Enterprise Miner Mid-tier Services 12.1then selectProperties.
  3. On the Advanced tab, locate the property named dminemd.components.extra.dir. In the Property Value field, enter the directory path to your extensions folder.
  4. Restart the SAS Enterprise Miner client to see the new node. There is no need to restart the middle-tier server.
For more information about the extension tools and the EXT Demo node, see the SAS Enterprise Miner Help documentation.