Overview of SAS Information Maps

What Is a SAS Information Map?

A SAS Information Map is business metadata that is applied on top of the data sources in your data warehouse. (Metadata is information about the structure and content of data. An information map does not contain any physical data.) Information maps provide business users with a user-friendly way to query data and get results for themselves.

An information map is based on one or more data sources, which can be tables or OLAP cubes. Information maps that are based on more than one table data source contain relationships that define how the data sources are joined. An information map contains data items and filters, which are used to build queries. A data item can refer to a data field or a calculation. Filters contain criteria for subsetting the data that is returned in a query. Folders can be used to organize the data items and filters so that business users can easily locate information within the information map.

To create an information map, you can use either SAS Information Map Studio, an application that provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for creating and viewing information maps, or the INFOMAPS procedure that is described in Overview: INFOMAPS Procedure. The following figure shows you what an information map looks like in the main window in SAS Information Map Studio.

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