Self-Service Data Access

SAS Visual Analytics offers a variety of ways to bring your data into the SAS Visual Analytics environment, which enables you to work with your data quickly. The following list summarizes the different ways:
  • Import data from a file When you are creating data queries, explorations, or reports, you can import data from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, a delimited text file (CSV), or a SAS data set. After you import the data, it is ready to use.
  • Autoload Instead of using your browser to import a file, you can transfer the file to a directory that acts as a drop box. A scheduled job imports the file from the directory. The process requires some setup before autoload can be used.
  • Import SAS data set on a server You can direct the SAS Application Server to import a SAS data set that is already on the server. The import process is optimized and you can import large files when a SAS data set is already on the server.
  • Import a database table After providing connection information, you can transfer a table from a database to a SAS LASR Analytic Server. Afterward, you can use the in-memory table as is for reports and explorations, or you can prepare it for analysis with the data builder.
    Note: Your site must license and configure the related SAS/ACCESS engine to use this feature.
  • Import tweets from Twitter After authenticating with Twitter and providing search criteria, you can import tweets into memory on a SAS LASR Analytic Server. You can then use the unstructured data with the explorer. A typical exploration of Twitter data can perform text analysis to look for patterns and trends in the tweets.