topic Re: SAS forecasting server in SAS Forecasting and Econometrics

SAS forecasting server

xlingjin — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 16:02:00 GMT

How many forecasting projects can SAS forecasting server run at the same time? If I have a database for 300,000 clients, and I would like to run a forecasting of sale for each of them. Will it be too much for the server to handle? Thanks!

Re: SAS forecasting server

mitrov — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 18:27:53 GMT

I am assuming you mean you have 300,000 series, one per each client? Each Forecast Studio project can handle many series. So all those 300,000 can go into one single project. Or you can split them into several projects.

In general, the answer depends on the data and the capacity of your server. Do you have, for example, 3 years of data at weekly interval for your 300,000 customers? Absolutely, FS can handle that on any modern machine.

Do you have 3 years of data at a nanosecond interval? Well, now we have to be a little bit more careful on how you organize it and the machine you are using.

Re: SAS forecasting server

xlingjin — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 19:47:10 GMT

Thank you very much for your reply!

Yes, it's 300,000 series, one per each client. Each client will have its own time series. It will be ~5 years of data at a daily interval. So from your experience, it looks like FS server should be able to handle it. How about forecasting studio desktop version? Can it handle large-scale forecasting?

I found some demo for SAS server and desktop version of forecasting studio, but I did not find any for the batch program. How does the batch program run?

@mitrov wrote:
I am assuming you mean you have 300,000 series, one per each client? Each Forecast Studio project can handle many series. So all those 300,000 can go into one single project. Or you can split them into several projects.

In general, the answer depends on the data and the capacity of your server. Do you have, for example, 3 years of data at weekly interval for your 300,000 customers? Absolutely, FS can handle that on any modern machine.

Do you have 3 years of data at a nanosecond interval? Well, now we have to be a little bit more careful on how you organize it and the machine you are using.

Re: SAS forecasting server

mitrov — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 22:05:48 GMT

Forecast Studio for desktop is limited to 1,000 series. It doesn't sounds that it would be suitable for your problem.

The batch interface is composed by SAS macros and accesses the same APIs used buy the GUI. You can find the documentation here:

http://supportprod.unx.sas.com/documentation/onlinedoc/forecast/14.2/fsag.pdf#page=115

Re: SAS forecasting server

xlingjin — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 22:17:14 GMT

Thanks a lot! It seems SAS forecasting server would be the best option for our application. Your link does not work. Are there any other way to access to the doc? To run SAS forecasting server, are there any other required software that we will need to purchase? we currently don't have any SAS products.

Re: SAS forecasting server

mitrov — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 22:21:15 GMT

The license for SAS Forecast Server is all you need. The install program will install everything needed.

Try Googling "sas forecast server administrator's guide". That should bring you to the documentation. Chapter 11 is what you want to look at.

Re: SAS forecasting server

xlingjin — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 15:30:52 GMT

Great! I really appreciate your help!!