topic How SAS knows the connection to SharePoint exists or not? in SAS Programming

How SAS knows the connection to SharePoint exists or not?

SASER — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 02:01:30 GMT

Hi,

Can someone help please help me find a solution to the below problem?

SAS reads data from sharepoint. But if the connection to SharePoint is broken SAS stops its process. Could somebody please help me to find a method/SAS function to know that the connection to Sharepoint is broken. If my question is not clear please do let me know so I can elaborate it further more.

Thanks

Re: How SAS knows the connection to SharePoint exists or not?

RW9 — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 08:47:16 GMT

Why would your "connection" to Sharepoint be broken? How is it connected? You can setup a drive mapping in your OS directly to Sharepoint (your IT can provide information), and you just reference that network drive. If you mean you might not have access to the internet or something at that time, then a simple check of fileexist('path_to_sharepoint\file.txt')=0, will result in 0 if that area does not exist (note replace the path, and the file with something you know is there).

Do remember however that Sharepoint isn't a "working" environment for SAS, you shouldn't use it as a data warehouse or such like.

Re: How SAS knows the connection to SharePoint exists or not?

SASER — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 02:04:56 GMT

RW9,

Thank you for the reply. Due to certain restrictions in the company I have to use SP as a small dataware house. I know that SP is not a good one to rely on too. I do have a mapping file that connects to the SP. Sometimes SP is down(no connection) and at that time the datasets can not be read from SP.
If I can type in a function that lets SAS know, that there is no connection to SP, then I can alter the program in such a way to go around such situations.Please do ask me for more details if that can help you suggest some solutions.

Re: How SAS knows the connection to SharePoint exists or not?

LinusH — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 08:36:51 GMT

You can't be serious. SP can never act as a DW. Perhaps as a BI publishing place, but other uses, no. There's no misunderstanding of the concepts here?
You even got my attention, describe what your DW looks like and you deploy it in SharePoint. And what kind of data do you read, in what format?

Re: How SAS knows the connection to SharePoint exists or not?

RW9 — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 09:40:17 GMT

I agree with @LinusH, Sharepoint is a Document Management Platform. It has no features associated with data capture/collection/storage and using it as such will cause you many problem - as you are noting with this "connection" you talk about. This mapping file you have must be something unique to your company, so nobody outside will be able to help you with that setup, nor is it a SAS problem. I would advise you speak to your IT people and ask them to setup a network area to store data and programs on.

Re: How SAS knows the connection to SharePoint exists or not?

SASER — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 14:17:53 GMT

LinusH,

I apologize for the confusion. What I really ment is that SP is a publishing place from where SAS reads the data. I am not so good with DW, so I thought of it as a small scale DW. I think you have good experience with SAS and SP, can you please suggest me an idea to tackle my problem.?

Thanks.

Re: How SAS knows the connection to SharePoint exists or not?

SASER — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 14:35:49 GMT

RW9,

Yes, the mapping file is created by the IT person, all it has are the Listing and Viewing IDs for the libraries that are used by sas in SP.

But in a jist this is how the process works...

1. SP has one library(lib-1) and inside that has 5 lists(list1-list5).
2. The Mapping file will have the List IDS for the Lists1-5.And the site path/address to reach the SP.
3. SAS reads the mapping file and goes to each of the Lists and gets the data from that list.

If the connectivity to SP breaks/no connection then while doing step 3, SAS stops because there is no connection to SP. My problem is to find out a way to make sas know that the connection to SP is broken and so dont stop, do something else.

Thanks

Re: How SAS knows the connection to SharePoint exists or not?

RW9 — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 14:49:47 GMT

As I mention above, you have some very odd setup, created specifically for your company, it is up to your IT group to supply the required information, be that as a feedback from this "connection" file, or some other method. Again, this isn't a SAS problem, but a problem with your setup.

Re: How SAS knows the connection to SharePoint exists or not?

LinusH — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 14:55:18 GMT

Sorry, not that much experience.
SP is ok If you wish to publish reports and building simple applications. But it's not a good place to publish data. Data should be stored in a database suited for the application. For most DW applications that is relational data store such as SAS, SQL Server etc.

Re: How SAS knows the connection to SharePoint exists or not?

SASER — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 12:24:35 GMT

Thanks RW9. I will have to speak to my IT persons.

Re: How SAS knows the connection to SharePoint exists or not?

SASER — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 12:25:33 GMT

Thanks LinusH.