Self-Service Data Access

SAS Visual Analytics offers a variety of ways to bring your data into the SAS Visual Analytics environment, which enables you to work with your data quickly. The following list summarizes the different ways:

Import data from a file When you are creating data queries, explorations, or reports, you can import data from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, a delimited text file (CSV), or a SAS data set. After you import the data, it is ready to use.
This feature is available to users in SAS Visual Analytics Explorer (the explorer) and SAS Visual Analytics Designer (the designer) who have been granted the Import and Load Data capability. Users who have been granted the Build Data capability can access advanced functions.

For more information about importing data in the explorer, see Import a Local Data Source.

For more information about importing data in the designer, see Import a Data Source for a Report.

For more information about importing data in the data builder, see Import Data Files from Your Computer. All of the advanced functions are available in the data builder.
Autoload Instead of using your browser to import a file, you can transfer the file to a directory that acts as a drop box. A scheduled job imports the file from the directory. The process requires some setup before autoload can be used.

The data builder provides a few more ways to perform self-service data access.

Import SAS data set on a server You can direct the SAS Application Server to import a SAS data set that is already on the server. The data builder can optimize the import process and import large files when a SAS data set is already on the server.
Import an Oracle table After providing connection information, you can transfer a table from an Oracle database to a SAS LASR Analytic Server. Afterward, you can use the in-memory table as is for reports and explorations, or you can prepare it for analysis with the data builder.
Note: Your site must license and configure SAS/ACCESS Interface to Oracle to use this feature.
Connect to a Twitter stream After providing connection information and search criteria, you can stream tweets into memory on a SAS LASR Analytic Server. You can then use the unstructured data with the explorer. A typical exploration of Twitter data can perform text analysis to look for patterns and trends in the tweets.