Changes to the Workflow and User Interface

Startup Sequence for a New User

When you invoke SAS/ASSIST for the first time, the Welcome window is displayed. When you select [Continue], the program searches in libraries that are declared for the current session for all available data sources. The results of this search are displayed in the Data Sources window, as shown in the following display. This window can be accessed in subsequent sessions from the Start window, described in Start Window, or from within a session by selecting

Tools Examine Data Sources

Data Sources Window

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By default, all the data source checkboxes are selected in the Data Sources window. When you select [Continue], SAS/ASSIST examines these data sources and establishes metadata for all data it finds. Selecting only the data sources relevant to your project improves performance and helps you to better understand the data.

Data Source Types

Data sources can contain metadata that was created for you in batch mode. The data source type ASSIST indicates that the metadata is batch generated. Not all data sources have batch-generated metadata.

Data sources can be the following types:

ASSIST Metadata was generated in batch for these data sources. The actual sources could be on any number of engines.

REMOTE Library has been assigned using a libname statement with a Remote attribute. The source could be a SAS data source or any engine that SAS is able to access on a server.

Other Any SAS/ACCESS engine type may appear as a data type. This includes V8 , V6 , Oracle , DB2 , Sybase , and ODBC .

The WORK library

The Library list includes the WORK library. The metadata is automatically updated when you create temporary tables in the WORK library, even if you have cleared the check box for WORK in the Data Sources window.

Optimizing Performance

The Data Sources window also contains a No.of Tables check box. Selecting this check box causes the Data Sources window to display the number of tables that are present in the data source. This gives you an indication of how long the process of metadata creation will take. Metadata creation time increases as the number of tables in a data source increases. Calculating the number of tables in a data source is a dynamic operation and can be time consuming.

Creating Metadata

When you select Continue, SAS/ASSIST software examines the selected data sources and gathers information about the data, including table names, column names, and the location of the data. This information is saved in two tables, _ASTDCOL and _ASTDTAB, in the SASUSER library. The batch-generated metadata associated with the ASSIST-type data sources is also stored in the SASUSER library. See Generating Metadata in Batch for more information on generating metadata in batch mode.

Updating Metadata

Stored metadata can be reused in its current configuration, modified, updated at the beginning of a session, or refreshed from within a session. The parameters for these options can be set in the User Profile window, which is described in Changing the Settings for Metadata Creation in the User Profile.

When you select [Continue] in the Data Sources window, metadata is created and the Start window appears. For a description of the Start window, see Start Window.

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ASSIST	Metadata was generated in batch for these data sources. The actual sources could be on any number of engines.
REMOTE	Library has been assigned using a libname statement with a Remote attribute. The source could be a SAS data source or any engine that SAS is able to access on a server.
Other	Any SAS/ACCESS engine type may appear as a data type. This includes `V8` , `V6` , `Oracle` , `DB2` , `Sybase` , and `ODBC` .