What’s New in SAS Visual Analytics 6.1 Administration

Overview

The following enhancements and changes apply to SAS Visual Analytics 6.1:
  • The SAS Visual Analytics Data Preparation interface has been replaced by two new applications with robust new features - the SAS Visual Data Builder and the SAS Visual Analytics Administrator.
  • Geo maps are supported in both SAS Visual Analytics Explorer and SAS Visual Analytics Designer. Both applications support the selection of columns for longitudes and latitudes that exist in the data. The automatic mapping of geo columns that are based on items such as countries, states, or cities is available only in SAS Visual Analytics Explorer.
  • SAS Visual Analytics web viewer supports streaming output for stored processes. The results of the stored process are displayed in the SAS Visual Analytics web viewer immediately after execution. The data sources for stored processes can be either LASR tables in the SAS LASR Analytic Server or tables in the metadata.
  • On the SAS Visual Analytics Home page, thumbnails enable users to open explorations, reports, queries, or stored processes. By default, the SAS Visual Analytics 6.1 deployment does not enable shared thumbnails. Shared thumbnails do not honor row-level security that might have been enforced for the data in an object that is associated with a particular thumbnail. However, you can enable the sharing of thumbnails.
  • Treemaps and correlation matrices are supported by SAS Visual Analytics Explorer. For high-cardinality data, data thresholds are set for both treemaps and correlation matrices.
  • SAS Visual Analytics Transport Service includes new properties that can be configured:
    viewerservices.data.default.interactive.drill.depth
    determines the amount of data that is sent to the mobile device for offline drilling.
    viewerservices.lasr.socketTimeout.milliseconds.interactions
    determines the duration of wait time when the SAS Mobile BI application makes an attempt to contact the SAS LASR Analytic Server. This property is applicable for live requests from a mobile device for tasks such as filtering, brushing, and drilling.
    viewerservices.lasr.socketTimeout.milliseconds.subscribe
    determines how long the SAS Mobile BI application waits for a response to a query in a subscribed report when it contacts the SAS LASR Analytic Server.
  • SAS LASR Authorization Service, SAS Visual Analytics Administrator, and SAS Visual Data Builder use log4j to perform logging.
  • The scheduler.sh script for the Search Interface to SAS Content automatically enables loadindex to run and search for items to be updated. You can modify the interval frequency at which you want the scheduler.sh script to run. You can also customize the settings for automatic e-mail notifications to a recipient when the search index is loaded successfully or when errors occur. If you prefer not to receive e-mail notifications, they can be turned off.

SAS LASR Analytic Servers

SAS Visual Analytics 6.1 provides support for distributed and non-distributed SAS LASR Analytic Servers. The non-distributed SAS LASR Analytic Server is deployed in organizations where data sources are not co-located, and the data is loaded to memory via serial processing. When the distributed SAS LASR Analytic Server is deployed, data sources can be loaded directly to the SAS LASR Analytic Server or via parallel processing from co-located data providers such as the SAS High-Performance Deployment of Hadoop, Teradata server, or Greenplum server.

SAS Visual Data Builder

SAS Visual Data Builder enables analysts and data administrators to perform analytic data preparation. You can build queries to perform joins, add calculated columns, and subset and sort data. Several productivity features speed the creation of columns based on common aggregation functions. Once you design your queries, you can reuse them as subqueries for more sophisticated queries, export them as jobs for scheduling, or schedule the query directly from the user interface.
SAS Visual Data Builder also provides a series of features that are used in deployments that include SAS LASR Analytic Server. You can load an existing table directly into memory, load the results of a query into memory, or append rows to an in-memory table on a server.

SAS Visual Analytics Administrator

SAS Visual Analytics Administrator enables administrators to view SAS LASR Analytic Servers that are registered in the metadata and manage server connections by starting or stopping them in the LASR Tables tab. You can load registered tables from SAS metadata to the SAS LASR Analytic Servers.
You can add tables to HDFS, or to co-located providers such as Teradata and Greenplum servers. Then, you can load tables from the co-located providers to the SAS LASR Analytic Servers.
An Authorization page provides quick information about the effective permissions for a table or a folder, indicates any direct access controls, and enables you to add or remove explicit controls. You can add an explicit grant or denial for LASR tables. You can also set a row-level permission for a LASR table by selecting a conditional grant and specifying the condition.

Servers and Libraries in the Metadata

SAS Visual Analytics uses the servers and LASR libraries that are registered in SAS metadata. During the deployment of SAS Visual Analytics, a set of default servers and libraries are registered for you. One of the default servers is a SAS LASR Analytic Server, and a library for that server that is named SAS Visual Analytics LASR.
A Hadoop, Teradata, or Greenplum server and associated library name is only included when a distributed SAS LASR Analytic Server is deployed. All deployments include the SAS LASR Analytic Server and an associated library.

New Security Model

SAS Visual Analytics 6.1 uses the metadata authorization layer to manage access to metadata objects such as reports, explorations, stored processes, tables, folders, and queries. All users are required to have metadata identities, and only data administrators are required to have passwordless SSH configured for their accounts. User access to a metadata object is determined by the metadata permissions assigned to the user’s SAS identity and the groups or roles to which a user is assigned.
User access to data sources in the SAS LASR Analytic Server is managed by the SAS LASR Authorization Service in the middle tier. When a SAS Visual Analytics application user requests access to a data source (LASR table) in the SAS LASR Analytic Server, the SAS LASR Authorization Service provides a signed grant to the application. The SAS Visual Analytics application submits the signed grant to the SAS LASR Analytic Server. When the SAS LASR Analytic Server receives the signed grant, it performs the following actions:
  • validates the signature on the grant.
  • processes the request based on the constraints of the grant. For example, this might include limiting a user’s access to rows via the permission conditions that apply to the data source.

Row-level Security

In this release, row-level security enables you to control who can access particular rows within a LASR table, and it is defined by data filter expressions. For example, row-level access distinctions can be based on a simple attribute (such as security clearance level) or on a more complex expression that consists of multiple criteria. Row-level security information is stored in the SAS metadata.

Capabilities

New capabilities in this release that enable application features include:
  • View Report and Stored Process
  • Build Data
  • Purge Mobile Report Data
  • Require Passcode on Mobile Devices
  • Manage Authorization
  • Browse HDFS
Because organizations might have different administrators perform different types of administration, this release offers administration capabilities that you can enable in a granular fashion for custom roles.

Predefined Groups

Two new predefined groups are available in this release for administrators:
Visual Analytics Data Administrators Group
This group belongs to the Visual Analytics: Administration role. The Visual Analytics: Administration role contains the most comprehensive set of capabilities that are enabled for application features.
Visual Data Builder Administrators Group
This group belongs to the Visual Analytics: Data Building role. The Visual Analytics: Data Building role is primarily intended for data administrators that work with SAS Visual Data Builder.

Passwordless SSH Keys

In the SAS Visual Analytics 6.1 release, passwordless SSH is required only for administrators who perform the following tasks:
  • Start and stop SAS LASR Analytic Server connections in SAS Visual Analytics Administrator.
  • Load, unload, or reload tables to the SAS LASR Analytic Server.

Server and Table Signature Files

When a SAS LASR Analytic Server connection is started in SAS Visual Analytics Administrator, a server signature file is created and stored in the /tmp directory. The server signature file is accessed when the server connection is stopped in SAS Visual Analytics Administrator. When tables are loaded from SAS Visual Analytics Administrator or SAS Visual Data Builder to the SAS LASR Analytic Server, table signature files are created and stored in the/tmp directory.

Web Authentication for Mobile Devices

Web authentication for SAS Mobile BI is handled by SAS Visual Analytics Transport Services. In this release, SAS Mobile BI supports the basic method of web authentication.

SAS Visual Analytics 6.1 Promotion

SAS Visual Analytics objects can be promoted from a 6.1 to a 6.1 environment by using the Export SAS Package and Import SAS Package wizards provided by the SAS Intelligence Platform. You can promote SAS Visual Analytics objects from one server to another or within the same metadata server.
Explorations and reports reference tables that were loaded into the SAS LASR Analytic Server and made available to users. After the promotion process is completed, when you open an exploration or report, the application attempts to retrieve the relevant table from the SAS LASR Analytic Server. If that table is no longer available in the server’s memory, an error message is displayed. You can make the explorations and reports work by loading the data source into the SAS LASR Analytic Server and making it available to the promoted exploration or report.
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