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

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:

• common Web administration

• better integration with third-party security products

• SAS Content Server

• SAS Web Application Themes

• SAS Information Delivery Portal administration

• SAS Web Report Studio administration

• SAS BI Dashboard administration

The middle tier and its applications are supported on Windows and UNIX platforms.

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

• A new SAS Web Infrastructure Platform provides basic services and applications that are used by all Web applications that run in the middle tier of the intelligence platform. The SAS Web Infrastructure Platform contains some of the technology that the SAS Web Infrastructure Kit contained in previous releases, such as the SAS Services Application and the SAS Stored Process Web Application. However, the SAS Web Infrastructure Platform technologies are used not only by the SAS Information Delivery Portal, but also by other SAS Web applications. The SAS Web Infrastructure Kit no longer exists.

• You can customize SAS themes in a single place. The Web applications can then be configured to use the theme that you customize.

• All Web authentication occurs through a central authentication service. This change simplifies the task of configuring Web authentication.

• SAS Web Administration Console allows you to log on from a remote site and view information that is normally available in the SAS Management Console. You can view authenticated users and system users that are logged on to a SAS Web applications, as well as the current configuration of Web applications deployed at your site. In the second maintenance release for SAS 9.2, the Restart Maintenance Wizard enables you to send e-mail to users to log off from their sessions within a specified deadline, logs off users after the deadline, and prohibits new users from logging into their user applications. The second maintenance release for SAS 9.2 also includes the Quiesce System. The Quiesce System feature is useful when you want to allow existing users to stay logged on to their user sessions, but you want to quiesce the system by preventing new users from logging on to SAS Web applications. You can also access the SAS Content Server page to manage folders and permissions for content in the SAS Content Server.

• With the SAS Deployment Manager, you can either remove an existing configuration or rebuild SAS Web applications. Beginning with the second maintenance release for SAS 9.2, when you rebuild Web applications by using the SAS Deployment Manager, the EAR files for the Web applications are automatically exploded and placed in two different directories.

• The SAS Configuration Manager, which is available in the SAS Management Console, enables you change settings or specify property names and values for several applications, including SAS Information Delivery Portal, SAS Web Report Studio, SAS BI Dashboard, and SAS Web OLAP Viewer for Java.

• Logging for all SAS applications is accomplished by using the Logging Service Configuration dialog box within the Configuration Manager in SAS Management Console.

• System folders are not accessible to SAS Web application users, and can be accessed only through SAS Management Console. For example, System and Users folders are both system folders, and are not visible from within SAS Web Report Studio 4.2.

• Beginning with the second maintenance release for SAS 9.2, the sas-environment.xml file is used to define the available set of SAS environments for SAS client applications. You use this file to configure multiple environments by customizing and deploying this file to an HTTP server.

The following enhancements have been added:

• Web authentication is supported for JBoss, Oracle WebLogic, and IBM WebSphere application servers.

• The middle-tier software supports interaction with WebSeal and SiteMinder.

• Administrators can configure client certification for one-way and two-way SSL authentication.

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 allows 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, multiple folders in the SAS Content Server can be deleted concurrently within the SAS Web Administration Console.

SAS Web Application Themes contain definitions for themes that are used by several SAS Web applications. Themes allow you to create and apply consistent, visual customization and company branding that will 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).

The following enhancements pertain to SAS Information Delivery Portal administration:

• The portal uses the SAS Web Infrastructure Platform for authentication, security, and other common Web infrastructure services. The portal uses a common framework that provides consistency among all SAS Web applications for configuration:

  • message logging within Configuration Manager

  • WebDAV content access

  • logon and authentication methods

  • themes and branding specifications

• For managing portal content, a group content administrator is recommended. The group content administrator can share personal content with the group, and can edit or remove content that has been shared with the group.

• STICKY pages are referred to as PERSISTENT pages.

• The Portal Admins group, which existed in SAS Information Delivery Portal 2.0, is not created in the current version. Instead, the Portal ACT is created and used to set permissions on the Permissions trees.

• The SAS Trusted User, who is also the portal administrator, is responsible for administering the portal, and is a member of the Portal ACT.

• The public kiosk does not exist anymore. The content administrator shares content with the PUBLIC group to ensure that all users have access to the content.

• By default, PUBLIC users have restricted access. In order to allow PUBLIC users to access content in the SAS Information Delivery Portal, you will need to enable permissions.

• In SAS 9.1.3, the portal created permission trees for identity groups that defined the roles. In SAS 9.2, the portal does not create the permission trees associated with the roles.

The October 2009 release 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 following enhancements pertain to SAS Web Report Studio administration:

• In SAS Web Report Studio 4.2, you have the flexibility to choose the location of the SAS Web Report Studio user folders anywhere below the SAS Folders directory in the Folders tab window in SAS Management Console. Previously, in SAS Web Report Studio 3.1, you were required to use predefined storage folders. This is no longer the case.

• The /BIP Tree/ReportStudio/Shared/Reports folder path does not exist in SAS Web Report Studio 4.2. However, if your organization migrated from SAS 9.1.3 to SAS 9.2, the legacy path is automatically enabled in the Web Report Studio 4.2 Properties dialog box within SAS Management Console. As a result, the legacy folder paths are available to users in SAS Web Report Studio's Location drop-down menu.

• SAS Web Report Studio 4.2 offers three predefined roles with certain capabilities that are assigned to these roles initially. These predefined roles include Report Viewing, Report Creation, and Advanced. You are not required to use predefined roles. You have the ability to create roles and capabilities that meet the needs of your organization. You can determine the number of roles to create, which features are available for each role, and control other aspects of role-based behavior.

• The Report Distribution Wizard has been significantly enhanced to enable you to create and edit recipient lists by specifying recipient names and e-mail addresses, and channel information within the wizard's dialog boxes.

• When users need to view a report, and are transferred by an external application such as the SAS Information Delivery Portal, those users are transferred to SAS Web Report Studio (if the application is installed). The functionality offered by the SAS Web Report Studio is determined by the role capability assigned to these users.

• You can set security measures to limit SAS Web Report Studio to interact only with information maps that are in designated locations. For example, you might limit the availability of all relational information maps because some of those information maps include row-level permissions.

• The DefaultLoggerProperties.xml file is not used. Logging for all applications is now accomplished by using the Logging Service Configuration dialog box within Configuration Manager in SAS Management Console.

• Previously, if client-side pooling was configured, SAS Web Report Studio 3.1 required that the pooling administrator's user name and password be stored in the metadata. This requirement has been waived in SAS Web Report Studio 4.2.

• In previous versions of SAS Web Report Studio, the LocalProperties.xml file offered the only practical method to override properties and their values. Although this file is available and supported in SAS Web Report Studio 4.2, it is recommended that you use the Configuration Manager in SAS Management Console to configure and set properties for SAS Web Report Studio. The Configuration Manager offers a consistent interface to set properties for all SAS applications.

• SAS Web Report Studio 4.2 allows you to add disclaimer text to graphs and tables.

• The report output generation tool allows you to create pre-generated, static versions of reports from the command line. This tool has been updated with the rptbatch.bat file, which calls upon the outputgen.exe file. In addition, new parameters have been added to the report output generation tool.

• The WebReportStudioProperties.xml file is no longer used in SAS Web Report Studio 4.2. Instead, the Advanced tab in Web Report Studio Properties 4.2 is used to specify property names and property values.

• Previous users of SAS Web Report Studio will find that their home folders have been moved into new SAS 9.2 home folders. These new folders have restricted metadata permissions.

• SAS Web Report Studio 4.2 maintains a working area that is hidden from users. This working area, which is located at/System/Applications/SAS Web Report Studio/Web Report Studio 4.2, is accessed by using the SAS Management Console. This location might store shared content such as images.

• Banner images are stored in the /Web Report Studio 4.2/BannerImages folder. Sample conditional highlighting image files are deployed in the /Web Report Studio 4.2/ConditionalHighlightingImages folder.

• In SAS Web Report Studio 4.2, PUBLIC users do not have personal home folders. In addition, PUBLIC users do not have a location to store their history and preferences. As a result, PUBLIC users' report history is not retained.

• By default, PUBLIC users have restricted access. In order to allow PUBLIC users to access SAS Web Report Studio, you will need to enable permissions.

In SAS BI Dashboard 4.2, an alert can be set up to allow 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.

Copyright © 2009 by SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.