Best Practices for Starting Servers and Loading Tables

Start as few server instances as possible. You can load many tables into a server instance.

Start additional servers when you need to limit access to data that is loaded into memory. Start an additional server instance and load the data for the group of users that are authorized to view the data. Information about implementing group-level security is provided in the SAS Visual Analytics: Administration Guide.

Because a server description file represents a server instance, use descriptive filenames for them. For example, if data analysis is being performed by a team in a marketing organization and the group wants to limit access to the data, then start a separate server instance for the team and use a server description filename like marketingTeam1.

Whenever a group, such as the marketing team, needs additional data for analysis, use the same server description file so that you load it into the same server instance. If the server instance must be restarted for the group, use the same server description file.

Once explorations or reports are created using a particular data source, do not change the name of the server description file or the data source. If either of these are changed, then the exploration or report will not work.