What’s New in SAS Visual Analytics :: SAS(R) Visual Analytics 5.2: User's Guide

Enhancements to the Data Preparation Interface

Support for Jobs

The data preparation interface adds support for saving the data preparation activities as a job. The job is stored as an object in metadata. Metadata security applies to the object so that the jobs are visible to users that are authorized to use them only. Scheduling can be used to perform routine tasks such as restaging data, starting and stopping SAS LASR Analytic Server instances, and loading and unloading data.

For deployments that include SAS Data Integration Studio, jobs can be deployed for scheduling. Alternatively, you can export the code for the job to a directory and use it with a SAS DATA Step Batch Server. The batch server and the Schedule Manager support scheduling jobs. SAS Visual Analytics also includes support for using operating system scheduling and Platform Suite for SAS.

Enhancements to Preparing Data

The following enhancements are available when preparing data:

Tables can be joined with a variety of join conditions such as inner join, left outer join, right outer join, and full outer join.
Output data can be stored in Teradata and EMC Greenplum though SAS/ACCESS interfaces. The SAS LASR Analytic Server supports these two third-party vendor databases as a co-located data provider.

Support for New Co-Located Data Providers

SAS Visual Analytics Hadoop continues to be supported as the distributed data provider that is available from SAS. This release adds support for using Teradata and EMC Greenplum as co-located data providers. Data access is provided by a SAS/ACCESS interface that is used by the data preparation interface for reading and writing tables. Once the data is distributed to one of the third-party vendor appliances, the data preparation interface can be used to load the distributed data into a SAS LASR Analytic Server instance.

Enhancements to SAS High-Performance Computing Management Console

Enhancements to the console include:

support for HTTPS
support for Teradata and EMC Greenplum co-located data providers.
support for generating Secure Shell (SSH) keys for existing operating system user accounts.
support for distributing the shared mid-tier key to existing operating system user accounts. The key can be distributed independently from generating SSH keys.
support for monitoring long-running queries and temporary tables in EMC Greenplum.

Enhancements to the Home Page

New and enhanced features to the home page include:

Thumbnail images are available for explorations.
The object inspector has been enhanced. For example, it displays thumbnail images for explorations.
The search has been improved.

Enhancements to the Explorer Interface

The explorer interface has a new crosstab visualization type.

Enhancements to the Designer Interface

New and enhanced features in the designer interface include:

You can add text, images, and titles to reports.
You can add and update interactions for report objects using a new Interactions tab in the right pane.
You can add and reply to comments on reports using a new Comments tab in the right pane.
You can add and update data items for report objects using a new Roles tab in the right pane.
You can configure the tabs in the right pane. For example, you can choose to display icons instead of the tab names.
Using the updated data pane, you can get details about the measures in the report.
You can replace the data source for a report.
You can add duplicate data items.
The interface is more accessible via a keyboard.
The count aggregation is available for data items.
There is a frequency assignment for data items.
You can export data to Microsoft Excel, tab-separated values (TSV) files, and comma-separated values (CSV) files.