About Information Maps

What Is an Information Map?

An information map is a collection of data items and filters that describe and present a view of physical data tables in a form that is relevant and meaningful to a business user. (An information map does not contain any data—it is a map to the physical data.) You can use information maps with query and reporting applications such as SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Web Report Studio to build business reports for your enterprise data.

Note: SAS IT Resource Management does not enable you to manipulate information maps directly. You must use Information Map transformations to specify the information maps that will be created when the transformation's job is run. As a result, the information map properties that you can view from SAS IT Resource Management are limited and not available for direct modification. These properties include metadata about the information map such as its name, location, when it was created, who created it, when it was last modified, and who modified it. They are for information purposes only and cannot be modified. If you want to edit the parameters for an information map using SAS IT Resource Management, you must modify the Information Map transformation that creates the information map and run the corresponding job. In addition, the SAS IT Resource Management solution includes SAS Information Map Studio, which you can use to modify copies of supplied information maps.

Benefits of Using Information Maps

Information maps provide the following benefits:

Descriptive labels can be created and used rather than variable names in reports. For example, an information map might assign a column label such as “PagingFileType” to the raw data field that is named “PAGTYPE.”
Filters are available that can be added to any information map to make it easier to report on subsets of data. For example, you can select a filter named “Last Week” rather than constructing a WHERE clause like “WeekDateDescRank=2”. (Filters can be used for multiple reports.)
IT intelligence can be shared with other SAS applications, which can use information maps as sources for reporting. SAS Web Report Studio requires an information map as a source for its reporting processes. SAS Enterprise Guide supports information maps for reporting. SAS Foundation supports information maps by means of the information maps LIBNAME engine.

How Are Information Maps Created?

There are two ways to create an information map:

Execute a job that contains an Information Map transformation. You can create a job that contains an Information Map transformation in two ways:
- For many supported adapters, the Adapter Setup wizard creates jobs that contain Information Map transformations that, when run, create information maps for those adapters. For information about how to work with the Adapter Setup wizard, see About the Adapter Setup Wizard.
  
  Note: In SAS IT Resource Management 3.1 and SAS IT Resource Management 3.1.1, the Adapter Setup wizard created jobs that created or updated aggregation tables and also generated information maps based on those tables. If the job that modified aggregation tables was run, the corresponding Information Map transformations were part of that job. Therefore, the information maps were automatically regenerated. Starting with SAS IT Resource Management 3.2, jobs that create or update aggregation tables do not include transformations that generate information maps. Therefore, if any changes are made to the tables that are input to those Information Map transformations, that alter the structure of the table (for example, by adding or deleting columns), then the user must rerun the corresponding information map jobs so that the information maps are regenerated.
- SAS IT Resource Management enables you to create information maps for adapters by executing Information Map transformations. Information Map transformations are specified within a job. When the job runs, the Information Map transformations create information maps that are based on specified parameters. For information about how to create an Information Map transformation, see Create an Information Map Transformation.
Use SAS Information Map Studio to create, modify, and test information maps for SAS IT Resource Management. For more information, see the SAS Information Map Studio Help and Using SAS Information Map Studio .

Note: If you use SAS Information Map Studio to modify an information map that was created by an Information Map transformation, the changes are not carried over to the Information Map transformation. As a result, modifications that are made to an existing information map by using SAS Information Map Studio might be overwritten and lost when the corresponding job is rerun. To avoid this situation, modify a copied version of the automatically generated information map and save that modified version under a different name so that it will not be overwritten by the extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes.

Note: Information maps must be recreated whenever the structure of the tables underlying the maps is modified.

Where Are Information Maps Stored?

The Adapter Setup wizard creates folders within the IT data mart that you selected for each specified adapter. Within the adapter folder, Domain Category folders are set up for each separate domain that you specified. The information maps that pertain to a particular domain and the job that will create those maps are stored within that domain folder. The information map is created and stored when the job that contains the Information Map transformation is executed.

Note: When created by the Adapter Setup wizard, an information map is given the same name and is stored in the same location as the associated aggregation table. The icons that are next to the object can be used to distinguish the aggregation table from the information map. In the list of objects that can be displayed in the IT Data Marts tree, information maps are identified by this icon:

. Aggregation tables can be identified by this icon: Icon of an Aggregation Table

.

When generated from a user-specified Information Map transformation, information maps are saved in any location that you specify when you set up the Information Map transformation. The information map is created and stored when the job that contains the Information Map transformation is executed.

When generated from the SAS Information Map Studio application, information maps are stored in any location that you specify when you save the new information map.