SAS Web Infrastructure Platform

The SAS Web Infrastructure Platform is a collection of services and applications that provide common infrastructure and integration features for the SAS Web applications.

Services and Applications in the SAS Web Infrastructure Platform

Services and applications in the Web Infrastructure Platform provide the following benefits:
  • consistent installation, configuration, and administration tasks for Web applications
  • consistent user interactions with Web applications, such as logon
  • integration among Web applications as a result of sharing common resources
The following services and applications are included in the SAS Web Infrastructure Platform:
Services and Applications in the SAS Web Infrastructure Platform
Application or Service
Features
SAS BI Web Services for Java
Can be used to enable your custom applications to invoke and obtain metadata about SAS Stored Processes. Web services enable distributed applications that are written in different programming languages and that run on different operating systems to communicate using standard Web-based protocols. The most common protocol is the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).
The SAS BI Web Services for Java interface is based on the XML For Analysis (XMLA) Version 1.1 specification.
SAS Content Server
Stores digital content (such as documents, reports, and images) that can be created and used by the SAS Web applications.
SAS Logon Manager
Provides a common user authentication mechanism for SAS Web applications. It displays a dialog box for user ID and password entry, authenticates the user, and launches the requested application. SAS Logon Manager supports a single sign-on authentication model. When this model is enabled, it provides access to a variety of computing resources (including servers and Web pages) during the application session without repeatedly prompting the user for credentials.
You can configure SAS Logon Manager to display custom messages and to specify whether a logon dialog box is displayed when users log off.
SAS Preferences Manager
Provides a common mechanism for managing preferences for SAS Web applications. The application enables administrators to set default preferences for how locale, theme, alert notification, time, date, and currency are displayed. In the SAS Information Delivery Portal, users can view the default settings and update their individual preferences.
SAS Shared Web Assets
Contains graph applet JAR files that are shared across SAS Web applications. They display graphs in stored processes and in the SAS Stored Process Web application.
SAS Stored Process Web Application
Provides a mechanism for Web clients to run SAS Stored Processes and return the results to a Web browser. The SAS Stored Process Web application is similar to the SAS/IntrNet Application Broker, and has similar syntax and debug options. Web applications can be implemented using the SAS Stored Process Web application, the Stored Process Service API, or a combination of both. Here is how the SAS Stored Process Web Application processes a request:
  1. A user enters information in an HTML form using a Web browser and then submits it. The information is sent to a Web server, which invokes the first component, the SAS Stored Process Web application.
  2. The Stored Process Web application accepts data from the Web server, and contacts the SAS Metadata Server for retrieval of stored process information.
  3. The stored process data is then sent by the Stored Process Web application to a stored process server via the object spawner.
  4. The stored process server invokes a SAS program that processes the information.
  5. The results of the SAS program are sent back through the Web application and Web server to the Web browser.
SAS Web Administration Console
Provides features for monitoring and administering middle-tier components. This browser-based interface enables administrators to perform the following tasks:
  • Monitor users who are logged on to SAS Web applications, and send e-mail to them.
  • View user-level audit information such as the number of users, successful logons, unsuccessful logons, and find the time of a user’s last logon.
  • Use the Restart Wizard to send e-mail to users to log off within a specified deadline, log the users off after the deadline, and prevent new users from logging on to SAS Web applications before the deadline.
  • Use the Quiesce System feature to allow existing users to stay logged on, and quiesce the system by preventing new users from logging on to SAS Web applications.
  • Create, delete, and manage permissions for folders on the SAS Content Server
  • View configuration information for each middle-tier component.
SAS Web Infrastructure Platform Services
Provides a common infrastructure for SAS Web applications. The infrastructure supports activities such as auditing, authentication, configuration, status and monitoring, e-mail, theme management, and data sharing across SAS Web applications.
SAS Workflow
Provides the Web services that implement workflow management. The SAS Workflow services are used by SAS applications and solutions for tightly integrated workflow management.
In the middle tier, the SAS Web Infrastructure Platform plays an important and critical role with a collection of middle-tier services and applications that provide basic integration services.
In the Web application server, two sets of services are available to all SAS Web applications:
  • SAS Foundation Services
  • SAS Web Infrastructure Platform Services

SAS Foundation Services

The SAS Foundation Services is a set of core infrastructure services that enables Java programmers to write distributed applications that are integrated with the SAS platform. This suite of Java application programming interfaces provides core middleware infrastructure services. These services include the following:
  • client connections to SAS Application Servers
  • dynamic service discovery
  • user authentication
  • profile management
  • session management
  • activity logging
  • metadata and content repository access
  • connection management
  • WebDAV service
Extension services for information publishing, event management, and SAS Stored Process execution are also provided. All of the SAS Web applications that are described in this document use the SAS Java Platform Services. If you have correctly installed and configured the Web applications, the platform services are defined in your SAS metadata repository.
You can verify this metadata in the SAS Management Console. Depending on the Web applications that were installed, the SAS Portal Local Services (used by the SAS Information Delivery Portal) are displayed in the SAS Management Console.
In addition, other applications and portlets might have deployment of their own local services.

SAS Web Infrastructure Platform Services

The SAS Web Infrastructure Platform Services provide common infrastructure and integration features that can be shared by any SAS application. Here is a description of the features:
  • Audit provides a single, common auditing capability.
  • Authentication is a common method for authenticating middle-tier applications. A corresponding Web service provides connectivity based on WS security standards for Web service clients.
  • Configuration is a standard way to define, store, and retrieve configuration information for SAS applications.
  • Directives provide application integration so that SAS applications can share intelligence and data. Applications can link to one another without requiring specific information about a particular deployment location.
  • Mail is a single, common mechanism for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)-based mail.
  • Status and monitoring is a collective set of services providing information about the configured or functioning system.
  • Comment service enables users to add comments, with or without an attachment. This feature enables the capture of human intelligence and supports collaborative decision making related to business data.
  • Alerts service enables users to register to receive time-sensitive, action-oriented messages when a specified combination of events and conditions occurs. Alerts can be sent to the user's e-mail address or displayed in the SAS Information Delivery Portal.
  • Themes provide access to theme definitions for presentation assets used in Web applications.
  • SAS Workflow Services enable applications to interact with business processes that run in the SAS Workflow Engine.
  • Registry provides access to services for desktop clients; a client needs to know only a single endpoint to determine other required locations.

SAS Workflow

SAS Workflow provides services that work together to model, automate, integrate, and streamline business processes. It provides a platform for more efficient and productive business solutions. SAS Workflow is used by SAS solutions that benefit from business process management.
SAS Workflow Studio is a desktop client application that is used to design and deploy workflows. The SAS middle tier hosts the workflow engine and the workflow services.
For deployments that use the default SAS Web Infrastructure Platform database provided by SAS Framework Data Server, there is a limitation on the number of groups and roles that SAS Workflow user can belong to. Users of SAS Workflow, and SAS solutions that use SAS Workflow, are limited to being members of 26 roles and groups. Attempting to assign more than 26 roles and groups to a user can cause queries to fail in the SAS Framework Data Server.
For deployments that use WebSphere Application Server and have a SAS solution, such as SAS Enterprise Case Management, that uses SAS Workflow, change the following settings to improve performance:
  1. Increase the memory settings in the JVM options:
    1. Select Serversthen selectServer Typesthen selectWebSphere application servers and then select SASServer1. If SASWorkflow9.3 is deployed on a different server, then select that server instance instead.
    2. Select Java and Process Managementthen selectProcess definition and then click Java Virtual Machine. In the Generic JVM arguments field, change the settings to the following values: 
      -Xms4096m -Xmx4096m -Xss512k
      Remove the -Xmso JVM option if it is present.
  2. Set optimistic locking and increase the connection pool size for the SharedServices data source:
    1. Select Resourcesthen selectJDBCthen selectData sources and then select SharedServices.
    2. Click Custom properties and then click New. Enter the following settings:
      Name: websphereDefaultIsolationLevel
      Value: 2
      Type: java.lang.String
    3. Select SharedServices from the breadcrumb at the top of the page and then select Connection pool properties. Change the values for the following settings:
      Maximum connections: 100
      Minimum connections: 1
  3. Increase the settings for JMS connection pooling:
    1. Select Resourcesthen selectJMSthen selectQueue connection factories and then select SASQueueConnectionFactory.
    2. Click Connection pool properties. Change the values for the following settings:
      Maximum connections: 50
      Minimum connections: 10
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