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.