A key feature of the
data preparation interfaces is to prepare data for analysis. The last
stage of the data preparation activity is to add the prepared data
to HDFS so that it can be loaded into memory on the SAS LASR Analytic Server.
Analysts can then explore the data from the SAS Visual Analytics explorer
interface. For deployments that have data that is already prepared
for analysis, the HDFS content explorer enables administrators to
add that data to HDFS directly. The HDFS content explorer also enables
administrators to view information about the prepared data such as
the row count, columns, and column information.
When tables are added
to HDFS with the data preparation interface, they are stored with
a SASHDAT file suffix. This is a special file format used by the SAS LASR Analytic Server.
This special file format and the data redundancy provided by SAS Visual Analytics Hadoop
enable the SAS LASR Analytic Server
to read the data in parallel at very impressive rates. The data that
is stored in HDFS is stored in blocks. The HDFS content explorer enables
an administrator to view the block distribution, block redundancy,
and measures of block utilization.