Watch this Ask the Expert session to explore the benefits of transitioning to SAS Viya, as our experts help you make an informed decision.
Watch the Webinar
You will learn about:
- What’s in the SAS Data Engineering offering.
- Data jobs compared to SAS Studio flows and how to migrate jobs in flows.
- Benefits you’ll see in SAS Data Engineering.
The questions from the Q&A segment held at the end of the webinar are listed below and the slides from the webinar are attached.
Q&A
Is SAS Viya sounding the alarm for the end of SAS 9.4?
Both SAS 9.4 and SAS Viya continue to be supported. SAS Users are encouraged to adopt SAS Viya when they are ready. SAS Viya provides familiar SAS capabilities but in a modern way. Viya can help you accelerate workloads, get faster results, lower the costs of data and analytics, while providing highly productive user experiences.
What is the overhead of the SAS Content Assessment e.g. would you run it on Prod during office hour?
It is recommended to run it on a machine that is non-metadata server, such as the SAS Application Server for example. The Content Assessment counts slowly so CPU or I/O does not impact the server. This means you can run your regular workloads and the SAS Content Assessment counting as well.
I think your mileage could vary depending on how big of a SAS 9 deployment you have. We have customers that do run it during the day, but it also could be kicked off in off-peak times. What it's really doing is parsing logs. It is a snapshot in time to collect information of your SAS deployment. You may end up running it multiple times as you go through your planning process. There is also a lite version that isn’t as detailed but can usually run in less than an hour. I encourage you to reach out to your SAS account team to discuss which option is best for you.
What are the ways to import DI jobs in Viya?
There is a manual way, and I think it's always good to start this way to understand the process. There is a CLI process and the combination of the CLI and the automation capabilities included with SAS Content Assessment. The automation tools can really speed up the migration process. For example, when you run content assessment and it's collecting where lib name statements with paths to the file system. You then need modify those statements as to where it will be when you move to Viya. Creating that mapping as part of your process to run when you import them into SAS Viya can be a tedious task, but the automation tools can help simplify this step. The automation tools are really geared towards helping those customers that have a lot of SAS content.
Is there a list that show's which DI Transforms are not available in SAS Studio yet and what the planning is for making them available in SAS Studio, or whether any are not planned for making available in SAS Studio?
Yes, when you run the SAS Content Assessment and share the results with SAS there is a report that shows a migration status for the items in the job. SAS R&D is continuously updating the capabilities, so the DI Jobs migrate to SAS Viya easily. Each month there's a process that they go through to update content assessment with what's available and what's not. A large percentage will migrate today. There are some items still being developed or enhanced, for example the loop transformation.
Are there resources to help with migration?
Absolutely. Your SAS team should be your first resource to ask for help. We have PSD services, partners and e have a lot of people in the group that I work in that can help with customers and their questions.
Will the importer be able to translate every piece of existing SAS code to a flow?
Yes, the SAS code importer preserves the SAS code as it is and puts it into steps in a flow. Each step is generally a data step or procedure. Secondly, when importing a SAS DI Studio Job, the import process translates the metadata settings and DI transforms into the appropriate equivalent in SAS Studio Flow. If there is no equivalent step, it will be inserted as a SAS code node.
Recommended Resources
SAS Viya Migration YouTube Playlist
Content Migration
SAS Custom Steps in Github
SAS Data Engineering
Please see additional resources in the attached slide deck.
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