What's New Table of Contents |
What's New in SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1
Overview
SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1 includes the following new features and enhancements:
- improved integration with the SAS®9 platform
- access to information maps
- enhancements to the user interface and work flow
- enhancements to creating a stored process
- new and enhanced SAS tasks
- enhancements to the OLAP Analyzer
Improved Integration with the SAS®9 Platform
SAS Enterprise Guide has improved its integration with the SAS®9 platform with the following enhancements:
- The SAS Enterprise Guide Explorer has replaced the SAS Enterprise Guide Administrator and is available from within SAS Enterprise Guide. You can use the SAS Enterprise Guide Explorer to add, modify, and delete Open Metadata Repository (OMR) resources, such as servers and users.
- You can create reports in the SAS Report Object Model (ROM) format which allows them to be integrated with other SAS components that render ROM content, such as SAS Web Report Studio. You can add multiple results to the report along with text and images, and you can choose how to arrange them in the report.
Access to Information Maps
You can use an information map to import data to a project. After you select an information map, you can specify the data items to include, apply filters to the data, and specify an output location. When you run the information map, the result is a SAS data set that can be used as input for further tasks and queries.
Enhancements to the User Interface and Work Flow
The following enhancements were made to the SAS Enterprise Guide user interface and work flow:
- You can now define parameters for a project. The project parameters can be referenced in tasks, code, and queries and can be defined so that they prompt the user at run time.
- The Query Builder interface has been redesigned to be more intuitive and easy to use. Some of the changes include having no columns selected for the output by default, a separate window for managing joins between tables, more intuitive output data set names, and a Parameters option to create new project parameters.
- You can now create and view an aggregated log of tasks and code activity for your entire project.When you create new data, the New Data wizard opens to step you through the process of specifying the name and location of the new data and creating the initial columns.
- The Project Designer tab (formerly the Process Flow window) is an integral part of the SAS Enterprise Guide workspace. This tab contains all of the process flows for a project. The following enhancements have been made to process flows for this release:
- You can create links between objects in a process flow. This enables you to create your own dependencies between objects in a process flow.
- SAS Enterprise Guide automatically arranges the objects in a process flow, but you can re-arrange items by turning off the auto-arrange functionality.
- You can print process flows.
- Ordered lists enable you to create a list of tasks and programs in the current project that can be run in the order that you choose. You can select objects from more than one process flow. In this way, you can group objects without changing their positions in process flows or their relationships to other objects.
Enhancements to Creating a Stored Process
You can now create a stored process from an entire process flow. Creating a stored process from a process flow enables you to combine several tasks or queries in a single stored process. You cannot create a stored process from individual branches in the process flow.
New and Enhanced SAS Tasks
- The following SAS tasks are new for this release:
- Bar-Line Chart enables you to create a vertical bar chart with a line plot overlay.
- Compare Data enables you to create a report that compares two data sets or compares two variables within or across data sets.
- Characterize Data enables you to create a summary report, graphs, and frequency and univariate SAS data sets that describe the main characteristics of the data.
- Create Time Series Data enables you to convert transactional data into fixed-interval time series.
- Data Set Attributes enables you to create a report with the data set's creation date, location, and number of observations as well as the variable names, labels, types, and formats.
- Model Scoring enables you to score a data set against an existing SAS Enterprise Miner predictive model.
- New wizards provide a quick and easy way to use some of the SAS tasks and to contain a limited number of options. These wizards are helpful if you are new to a task or if you want to quickly generate an analysis. The following tasks have added a wizard view for this release:
- Bar Chart
- Line Chart
- Pie Chart
- Summary Statistics
- Summary Tables
Enhancements to the OLAP Analyzer
The following enhancements were made to the OLAP Analyzer:
- You can now use the OLAP Analyzer to view ESRI map data that is associated with an OLAP cube if you have ArcGIS software installed on your computer.
- The new Cube Explorer enables you to select a dimension, expand a node within that dimension, and then change to another level or dimension. You can use this method to explore the data and find paths through the cube that might point to areas that need further analysis.
- You can use the OLAP Analyzer to view member properties that might be stored with your cube. Member properties are additional attributes that can be associated with dimension members.