About SAS Enterprise Guide Projects

What Are SAS Enterprise Guide Projects?

In SAS Enterprise Guide, you can work with projects, process flows, branches, and tasks in order to manage the reporting process.

Here are some of the SAS Enterprise Guide components that are used in SAS IT Resource Management reporting:

Projects

Projects are used by SAS Enterprise Guide to manage each collection of related tasks, code, references to data, and results.
Process Flows

A process flow is a view within a project that shows a set of related data sets, tasks, and results that are linked and can be executed in a single stream. You can run a portion of the process flow or the entire process flow. A project can have multiple process flows that can be selected from the Project Tree.
Branches

A branch is a set of related tasks that are linked and can be executed in a single stream. Branches can be accessed from a process flow window in SAS Enterprise Guide.
Tasks

In SAS Enterprise Guide, tasks generate SAS code and formatted results. Tasks include SAS procedures that can generate many types of reports, from simple data listings to complex analytical procedures.

SAS IT Resource Management supplies an ITRM Gallery task that creates report definitions.

SAS Enterprise Guide Projects Supplied by SAS IT Resource Management

During installation, SAS IT Resource Management provides several SAS Enterprise Guide projects. These projects are stored in the <SAS install location>\SAS\ITRMEG\3.2 folder (such as c:\Program Files\SAS\ITRMEG\3.2 for Windows) on each client machine where both SAS IT Resource Management and SAS Enterprise Guide are installed.

These projects, when executed, generate reports that provide domain intelligence for IT resources. The following two displays show the tree view and workspace view for the supplied project called SARDisk.egp and the process flow called DayJobDetailDisk.

The tree view provides a hierarchical representation of data, tasks, results, and other objects that are associated with your projects. All of the process flows that are associated with this project are displayed in the tree view of the project.

Tree View of the DayJobDetailDisk Process Flow in the SARDisk.egp Project
The workspace view shows the process flow diagram of the objects in one process flow of your project.

Workspace View of the DayJobDetailDisk Process Flow in the SARDisk.egp Project

The tree and workspace views of the SARDisk.egp project provide examples of these terms:

The project name is SARDisk.egp.
The process flow name is DayJobDetailDisk.
The first task in the process flow is the information map called DetailDisk.
The process flow contains two branches that each start with a Map Import task called ImportDetailDisk.
- The import task in the first branch creates a table that provides the source data for the three report tasks that generate line plots and a tile chart .
- The import task in the second branch creates a table that provides the source data for two report tasks that generate two lines plots.
Note: After the SAS Enterprise Guide project is run, the resulting reports are rendered in HTML.
An ITRM Gallery task is appended to each branch. This task creates the generated code of the branch as a report definition. When the report definition is run in a report job, it creates output on the SAS Content Server.

Tip

Many supplied SAS Enterprise Guide projects include Project Notes and Process Flow Notes. The Project Notes file provides useful information about the reports that the project creates for the adapter and domain category. The Process Flow Notes file provides specific information about the columns and filters that are used in the various process flows of the project. You can use the information in these notes files to determine the types of reports that the project creates and understand the general conventions that are used to specify the reports.

Properties of Supplied SAS Enterprise Guide Reports

SAS Enterprise Guide reports that are supplied by SAS IT Resource Management conform to a set of reporting standards. These conventions, based on IT intelligence and best practices, designate standard specifications for report footnotes, titles, fonts, colors, filters, and so on.

Supplied projects use process flow names that typically suggest which job the reports should run in (for example, the daily job , the weekly job , or the monthly job). The process flow name also indicates the name of the information map that is used. The supplied SAS Enterprise Guide project called SARDisk.egp includes a process flow named DayJobDetailDisk. The name of this process flow suggests that it contains reports that should run in a daily job and that use the DetailDisk information map. This naming convention enables you to associate reports with their report jobs and identify the information maps and SAS tables on which the reports are based.

If you choose to create or edit IT reports, then it is recommended that you follow these reporting standards so that the reports that you create have the same look as those that SAS IT Resource Management supplies.

For more information, see Naming Standards for Reporting Objects and About Reporting Standards for SAS IT Resource Management Reports.