What's New

What's New in Web Application Administration for the SAS 9.2 Intelligence Platform


Overview

The middle tier of the SAS Intelligence Platform provides an execution environment for business intelligence Web applications such as SAS Web Report Studio and SAS Information Delivery Portal.

The middle tier has the following changes and enhancements:

The middle tier and its applications are supported on Windows and UNIX. JBoss, WebLogic, and WebSphere application servers are supported on Windows and UNIX. Beginning with the third maintenance release for SAS 9.2 and later, the WebSphere application server is supported on the z/OS platform.


Common Web Administration

A common Web infrastructure provides consistent and cohesive Web applications that are well integrated. This infrastructure layer results in the following enhancements:


Better Integration with Third-Party Security Products

The following enhancements have been added:


SAS Content Server

The SAS Content Server is a content repository that stores digital content (such as documents, reports, and images) that is created and used by SAS client applications. The Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol is used to access the SAS Content Server. The SAS Web Administration Console enables you to access the SAS Content Server to view directories, change permissions to directories, and create and delete directories.

Beginning with the second maintenance release for SAS 9.2 and later, multiple folders in the SAS Content Server can be deleted concurrently within the SAS Web Administration Console.

Beginning with the third maintenance release for SAS 9.2 and later, the SAS Content Server supports database persistence. By default, the SAS Content Server is configured to use the file system for persistence and need not be changed. In special cases, the SAS Content Server can be reconfigured to share and use the database that is used by SAS Shared Services. By default, SAS Shared Services uses the SAS Table Server, but it can be configured to use a different database such as Oracle, MySql, PostgreSQL, DB/2, or SQL Server.

Also, in the third maintenance release for SAS 9.2, the manual setting of JAVA_HOME variable to point to Java 5 is not required.

Beginning with the November 2010 release and later, content for the SAS Content Server can be loaded or updated manually by running a batch file or a script. In addition, directive URLs can be updated manually.


SAS Web Application Themes

SAS Web Application Themes contain definitions for themes that are used by several SAS Web applications. Themes enable you to create and apply consistent, visual customization and company branding that is be applied to all theme-enabled SAS Web Applications.

SAS Web applications such as SAS Web Report Studio, SAS Information Delivery Portal, and SAS BI Dashboard can be configured to facilitate a common look and feel across SAS applications. In SAS Web Report Studio, themes apply to the user interface, including the dialog boxes that are used to view, create, edit, and share reports. Themes contain images, HTML templates, and cascading style sheets (CSS).


SAS Flex Application Themes

Beginning with the November 2010 release, SAS BI Dashboard 4.3 and SAS BI Portlets are displayed with the Flex interface that is provided by SAS Flex Application Themes 2.2. At start-up time, Flex applications load Flex themes automatically. A theme consists of ShockWave Flash (SWF) files that include cascading style sheets (CSS) files. The theme content is downloaded to the client, and is cached by the user's Web browser. As a result, subsequent uses of the Web application result in quicker loading of theme content than it is at initial loading. The SAS Corporate theme is the default theme for all Flex applications.


SAS Information Delivery Portal Administration


SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.3

SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.3 offers these new features for administration:

The SAS Web OLAP Viewer for Java is no longer supported. It has been replaced by functionality that is available in SAS Web Report Studio 4.3. Therefore, SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.3 contains the following changes:

If SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.3 runs on a JBoss Web application server, and Secure Sockets Layer is configured in your environment, the server.xml file should be edited to specify the emptySessionPath parameter within the section on SSL Connector. This is necessary to enable the SAS BI Portlets to run in this environment.


SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.2

The following enhancements pertain to the administration of SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.2 and later:


SAS BI Portlets Administration

The October 2009 release and later provides SAS BI Portlets that are based on JSR 168 and available in the SAS Enterprise BI Server offering. These portlets are seamlessly integrated into the SAS Information Delivery Portal. SAS BI Portlets are also compatible with the WebSphere Portal 6.1.0.

The November 2010 release consists of the following new features and changes:

If SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.3 runs on a JBoss Web application server, and Secure Sockets Layer is configured in your environment, the server.xml file should be edited to specify the emptySessionPath parameter within the section on SSL Connector. This is necessary to enable the SAS BI Portlets to run in this environment.


Promotion of Portal Content

Using the content promotion tool provided in SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.3, you can promote the following types of portal content to SAS 9.2 deployments:

Batch files and scripts are available to promote portal content.

Typically, organizations develop and test portal content on one system before deploying the content to a production system. The content promotion tool enables you to move portal content from a development system to a production system, and the tool eliminates the need to regenerate the content manually.


SAS Web Report Studio Administration


SAS Web Report Studio 4.3

SAS Web Report Studio 4.3 consists of the following enhancements and changes:


SAS Web OLAP Viewer for Java

The SAS Web OLAP Viewer for Java application is no longer supported. It has been replaced by functionality that is available in SAS Web Report Studio 4.3. SAS Web Report Studio 4.3 contains the following changes:


SAS Web Report Studio 4.2

The following enhancements pertain to SAS Web Report Studio 4.2 administration:


SAS BI Dashboard Administration


SAS BI Dashboard 4.3

SAS BI Dashboard 4.3 offers several new features and enhancements that make administration easier, flexible, and convenient. These enhancements are as follows:


SAS BI Dashboard 4.2

In SAS BI Dashboard 4.2, an alert can be set up to enable Event Generation Framework to regularly poll BI Dashboard indicators, determine whether an event qualifies for an alert, and generate an alert for the user. In order to minimize the impact of constant polling on BI Dashboard's performance, you can customize and set parameters for alert latency.


SAS Web Parts for Microsoft SharePoint

In the November 2010 release, SAS Web Parts for Microsoft Sharepoint is a new product that includes: