What's New in Web Application Administration for the SAS 9.3
Intelligence Platform
Overview
The middle tier of the
SAS Intelligence Platform includes enhancements and changes for these
Web applications and the documentation:
SAS Information Delivery Portal
Changes in the First Maintenance Release for 4.31
The First Maintenance
Release for 4.31 includes a change to the command syntax for the removePortal
command that is used for removing a User or Group Permissions Tree.
When an existing Permissions Tree is being deleted, and it contains
non-DBCS characters or non-Latin characters, the command syntax should
include PermissionsTree_extract.xml instead of PermissionsTree.xml
.
Changes in the 4.31 Release
The 4.31 release of
SAS Information Delivery Portal includes the following changes and
enhancements:
-
The content promotion tool includes
a new
build.properties
file. When promoting
portal content from a SAS 9.1.3 environment to a SAS 9.3 or SAS 9.2
environment, the values for certain parameters in this file are modified
to ensure that the appropriate metadata repository ID and the names
of the internal accounts for sasadm and sastrust are specified to
prepare the target system.
-
An additional upgradeMetadata command
is used when promoting a Portal Application Tree or a portlet instance
to a target SAS 9.3 system from a source system with SAS 9.1.3 or
SAS 9.2.
-
Message logging is accomplished
with logging contexts that are added to the
SASportal-log4j
file.
Features Ported from the 4.3 Release
The following enhancements
and changes that were introduced in the 4.3 Release have been ported
to the 4.31 Release:
-
Messages that are displayed at
the top of pages and in the title bar of portlets can be hidden by
specifying two new properties and their values in SAS Management Console.
-
A content promotion tool is provided.
This tool consists of stand-alone batch scripts, shell scripts, and
metadata extraction templates. These scripts and templates use the
metadata server's import and export capabilities to promote portal
metadata.
-
SAS BI Portlets are displayed
with the Flex interface.
-
You can alert users by displaying
a warning message before they are logged out of their inactive sessions.
For information about using this feature, see
SAS Intelligence Platform: Middle-Tier Administration Guide.
-
You can choose to enable unchallenged
access to the portal. Users can then access the portal and interact
with selected content without providing a user ID and password. The
option is similar to the Public Kiosk feature in the SAS 9.1.3 release
of the SAS Information Delivery Portal.
-
A Diagnostics Portlet enables you
to view information about the portal's environment.
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. Therefore, SAS Information
Delivery Portal 4.31 contains the following changes:
-
Bookmarks and data explorations
are not supported.
-
All data explorations are migrated
to SAS Web Report Studio 4.31 reports. However, users can still use
the search capabilities within SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.31
to find those reports, as well as information maps.
-
SAS Information Delivery Portal
4.31 includes a new Report Portlet that displays SAS Web Report Studio
4.31 reports.
-
During software updates, the SAS
Information Delivery Portal converts instances of the Information
Map Viewer portlet to the new Report Portlet.
-
Visual Data Explorer is not available
to display information maps.
If SAS Information Delivery
Portal 4.31 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 BI Portlets
Features Ported from the 4.3 Release
New features and changes
introduced in the November 2010 Release have been ported to the 4.31
Release of SAS BI Portlets. These ported changes include the following:
-
SAS 9.3 supports SAS BI Portlets
on WebSphere 7 application server and WebSphere Portal Server 7. This
document contains updated instructions for deploying these portlets
to WebSphere 7.
-
The SAS BI Dashboard portlet is
a new addition to the suite of SAS BI Portlets.
-
The Diagnostics portlet is a new
portlet that enables you to determine the current status of the portal's
environment.
-
The SAS Collection Portlet, which
is included in the suite of SAS BI Portlets and is compliant with
JSR 168, does not allow users to search for data explorations. All
data explorations are migrated to SAS Web Report Studio 4.31 reports.
Users can, however, search for information maps in SAS BI Portlets.
SAS Web Report Studio
Features Ported from the 4.3 Release
The following enhancements
and changes that were introduced in the 4.3 Release have been ported
to the 4.31 Release:
-
Folders for images, templates,
and items for report distribution for users now reside within the
/SASWebReportStudio/Common
folder.
Previously, these folders were located within the
/SAS
Folders/System/Applications/SAS Web Report Studio/Web Report Studio
4.2
folder.
-
By default, clustering is enabled.
-
By default, in-process scheduling
is supported in a clustered environment. An in-process scheduling
server runs as a process inside SAS Web Report Studio., This process
eliminates the need to send jobs to an external scheduling server.
-
SAS Web Report Studio 4.31 has
30 UDP ports available for use by the application. These ports are
in the range of 7560 to 7589.
-
An event is logged in the
WebReportStudio_KeyActions.log
file
when a user creates, edits, or deletes a distribution list.
-
Details about SAS Web Report Studio
users' logon and logoff information from sessions can be viewed conveniently
in the
WebReportStudio_KeyActions.log
file.
-
You can specify a different directory
(other than the default directory) where the Key User Action log files
can be saved.
-
You can specify whether the display
of the left pane in
SAS Web Report Studio window
should depend on the user's preferences during the previous logon
session.
-
Two new capabilities have been
added to SAS Web Report Studio 4.31 and SAS Web Report Viewer 4.31:
Allow Direct Access to Cubes and Allow Direct Access to Tables. The
Allow Direct Access to Cubes capability is included by default in
the following roles: Web Report Studio: Report Creation, Web Report
Studio: Advanced, and Web Report Viewer: Advanced.
-
The Open Maps as Reports capability
has been renamed to Allow Direct Access to Information Maps. In addition,
the Repair Report capability has been renamed to Update Resources.
For sites that upgrade from SAS Web Report Studio 4.2, the names of
these capabilities will remain the same.
-
New styles are available for reports.
-
The Distribute Report Wizard includes
new features.
-
SAS Web Report Studio reports can
be scheduled only by regular users with a SAS identity. SAS internal
accounts cannot be used to schedule reports.
-
The optional
trusted
parameter
is not available in the Report Output Generation tool.
-
To distribute reports with the
Report Output Generation tool in environments with multihomed machines,
the
Outputgen.ini
file should be updated
to include the
-Djgroups.bind_addr
command.
-
Reports can be scheduled only by
regular users with a metadata identity. SAS internal accounts such
as the SAS Trusted User cannot be used to schedule reports.
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 4.31.
The following enhancements
and changes that were introduced in the 4.3 Release have been ported
to the 4.31 Release:
-
Bookmarks and data explorations
are not supported.
-
All data explorations are migrated
to SAS Web Report Studio 4.31 reports. You can still use the search
capabilities within SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.31 to find those
reports, as well as, the information maps.
-
The migration tool creates a copy
of the original data explorations and bookmarks, and places them in
the same location where the original content resided.
-
Visual Data Explorer is not available
to display information maps in SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.31.
-
In Edit mode within the portal,
users can select a SAS Web Report Studio report instead of a data
exploration.
-
The SAS Collection Portlet, which
is included in the suite of SAS BI Portlets and is compliant with
JSR 168, does not allow users to search for data explorations. All
data explorations are migrated to SAS Web Report Studio 4.31 reports.
Users can, however, search for information maps.
SAS BI Dashboard
Changes in the 4.31 Release
The following new administration
features are available in the 4.31 release of SAS BI Dashboard:
-
Using the Export SAS Package and
Import SAS Package wizards provided by the SAS Intelligence Platform,
you can promote individual metadata objects or groups of objects in
SAS BI Dashboard 4.31 from one server to another or within the same
metadata server.
-
The frequency with which the data
cache is inspected for caching updates can be configured and customized
for your environment by supplying a custom value for the configuration
property in SAS Management Console.
-
Two new configuration properties
are available for data caching. The values for these configuration
properties can be customized in SAS Management Console. These values
enable you to determine the frequency with which configuration objects
or dashboard objects are updated in the cache.
-
Message logging is accomplished
with logging contexts that are added to the
SASBIDashboard-log4j
file.
Features Ported from the 4.3 Release
The following enhancements
and changes that were introduced in the 4.3 Release have been ported
to the 4.31 Release:
-
Storage folders for SAS BI Dashboard
4.31 now exist in both the foundation SAS Metadata Repository and
the SAS Content Server or the file system.
-
Users' folders for SAS BI Dashboard
4.31 can be located anywhere below the
SAS Folders
directory
on the
Folders
tab of SAS Management
Console. Previously, in SAS BI Dashboard 4.2, you were required to
use predefined storage folders. This is no longer the case.
-
Configuration files for SAS BI
Dashboard 4.31 are stored on the SAS Content Server. Previously, all
files were stored in a file system.
-
You can use the SAS Content Server
Administration Console to manage SAS BI Dashboard 4.31 files and WebDAV
folders in the SAS Content Server.
-
You can enable users to log on,
view, and interact with a dashboard by creating metadata identities
for the users.
-
You can register a stored process
and make it available to SAS BI Dashboard 4.31 users.
-
Three types of caching are available:
data caching, content caching, and client caching.
-
Data caching was available previously
in SAS BI Dashboard 4.2. Beginning with SAS BI Dashboard 4.31, files
for data caching are stored in the SAS Content Server.
-
Content caching, which is a new
type of caching, is enabled by default in SAS BI Dashboard 4.31.
-
Client browsers that display dashboards
with SAS BI Dashboard 4.31 use Adobe Flash Player (Version 10.0 or
above) in the Rich Internet Application (RIA) architecture. Client
caching is enabled by default.
-
Image files are no longer cached.
-
SAS BI Dashboard 4.31 supports
the SAS Comment Manager. All users that can log on to the application
can view and add comments. To be able to edit and delete comments,
users or administrators must belong to the Comments:Administrator
role.
-
DSX files are stored in the SAS
Content Server.
-
DSX files are modified by exporting
the DSX file from SAS Management Console, making necessary changes
to the files, and importing the files.
-
The SAS BI Dashboard Portlet is
installed along with the other SAS BI Portlets. This portlet allows
users to display a dashboard that is created with the SAS BI Dashboard
application. The configuration of this portlet is identical to the
configuration of the SAS BI Portlets for the WebSphere Portal.
-
You can specify a session time-out
interval for inactive user sessions.
-
You can alert users by displaying
a warning message before they are logged out of their inactive sessions.
Documentation Changes
The following changes
have been made to this edition of the
SAS Intelligence
Platform: Web Application Administration Guide:
-
SAS Web Report Studio users who
have been assigned
Administrative: Manage Distribution capability
must also have ReadMetadata and WriteMetadata permissions to the directory
where the table will be created.
-
If SAS Web Report Studio properties
and values are specified in both
LocalProperties.xml
file
and in Configuration Manager, the values specified in the
LocalProperties.xml
take
precedence.
-
To enable SAS Web Report Studio
to correctly display and print bidirectional content (for example,
Hebrew), two properties must be specified in the
LocalProperties.xml
file.
-
In order to publish to a channel,
users must have Write permission to the channel. If the channel has
an archive persistent store, a WriteMetadata permission is required
for the repository, as well as, the channel.
-
Updated instructions are provided
for deploying SAS BI Portlets to the WebSphere Portal Server 7.
-
The topic on Key Aspects of Promoting
SAS BI Dashboard Content was updated with additional information.
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