Is SAS® Studio Replacing SAS® Enterprise Guide®? Q&A, Slides, and On-Demand Recording

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Watch this Ask the Expert session to learn how to choose between SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Studio, how SAS Enterprise Guide assets move to SAS Studio, and to see what's new in SAS Studio on SAS Viya. 

Watch the webinar

You will learn:

• The strengths and weaknesses of SAS Studio on SAS 9.4 and tips to help you choose between SAS Studio and SAS Enterprise Guide.
• What’s new in SAS Studio on SAS Viya and what’s planned.
• How SAS Enterprise Guide projects and SAS Data Integration Studio jobs are converted to SAS Studio flows on Viya.

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

Can you please provide us the SAS Studio version presented?

SAS Studio 2021.1.6 on Viya 4.

Why not make SAS Studio "look" like EG but be browser based?

That is one approach that we considered. Ultimately, we decided to go with a newer, web-focused interface, more consistent with the other SAS web apps.

Could you still use graphical coding if you don't code in SAS Studio?

Yes, SAS Studio has a library of point-and-click tasks that allow you to accomplish data preparation, analytic tasks, and reporting, without having to code. Also, SAS Studio has flow building capabilities that allow you to string steps together without having to code.

Can SAS Studio connect to an Oracle database?

Yes, SAS Studio can provide seamless access to an Oracle database, as well as many other databases, via our SAS/ACCESS engines and drivers.

Why does Studio not work on all the browsers all the time? We have had issues with Studio running every time on Chrome.

We test heavily on Chrome (and other browsers) to ensure we support them well. If you are having issues with Studio on Chrome, please enter a track with SAS Tech Support, so we can investigate and resolve.

The SAS DATA Step debugger is not available in Studio (until version 5.2, and then only for Viya). Are there any plans to make the data step debugger available between Studio and SAS 9.4?

Sorry, no, currently there are no plans to back-port the DATA Step debugger to the 9.4 version of SAS Studio (3.x).

Will stored processes be supported in SAS Studio?

Not on SAS 9.4. You could certainly write code in SAS Studio and then package it up in a stored process using SAS Enterprise Guide or SAS Management Console. On SAS Viya, yes, SAS Studio is actually the landing spot for migrated stored processes.  When you migrate a stored process, it becomes a Viya job and Viya jobs are editable within SAS Studio as well as the migrated prompts.

When users want to switch their egp projects from SAS EG to SAS Studio, is that feasible?

Yes.  Studio on 9.4 can open EGP files and will convert to a Studio flow.  For SAS Viya, there is a migration utility for migrating EG projects to SAS Studio.  In both cases reporting is available to summarize what was converted and what was not.

How can I determine if our SAS Studio is running on SAS 9.4 or SAS Viya?

In the SAS Studio interface, the help icon is in the upper right corner and contains an About selection that will tell you the release.  Alternatively, you can submit %put &sysvlong; in SAS Studio to display the SAS version in the log.  If you see something like "9.04.01M7..." in the log, then it's 9.4, or if you see "V.04..." it's Viya 4 (or "V.03" for Viya 3).

I have something called "SAS 9.4' on my desktop. Does that mean I don't have SAS Viya?

It means you have SAS version 9.4, but it does not necessarily mean you do not have SAS Viya. You can have access to both. However, SAS Viya is not normally installed on an end-user’s machine. Rather, you would access it via a URL provided by your SAS admin through your web browser.

Do you have plans to update SAS Studio with the benefits of SAS Enterprise Guide or will the future be to use SAS Viya instead?

Yes, the goal is to continue to enhance SAS Studio so that all the value you get from SAS Enterprise Guide you can also get from SAS Studio. SAS Studio is an application in SAS Viya.

What references exist to help me learn the UI features of SAS Studio? Keep in mind, I'm not looking to Google; I'm looking for an organized, systematic approach that has all the info in one place.

The best place to start is the product documentation in SAS' Help Center. The documentation links as well as links to video tutorials can be found here: https://support.sas.com/en/software/studio-support.html

Is release 3.81 (Enterprise Edition) the current option for Studio?

Version 3.81 is currently the latest version of SAS Studio on 9.4, yes. However, there are newer versions of SAS Studio on Viya (ex. Studio 5.2 on Viya 3.5), with the latest version (2021.1.6) on Viya 4.

Is SAS Studio available in Viya 3.5?

SAS Studio (v5.2) is available in Viya 3.5, however the flow building capabilities are new to SAS Studio on Viya 4 (not available in Viya 3.5).

What version of SAS Studio has flows?

Flows are new to SAS Studio on Viya 4. There is a similar flow concept in SAS Studio 3.x on 9.4 which you access by switching to the Visual Programmer perspective.

Can a process flow be added to SAS 9.4 SAS Studio or are there any plans to add it?

Flows are available in Studio 3.x on 9.4 via the Visual Programmer perspective.

Does the ability to do flows in SAS Studio a special licensing as we are not seeing it in our Viya SAS Studio?

You get basic flow building capabilities in all levels of SAS Studio on Viya 4. Flow building is new to Viya 4, so if you don't see it in your SAS Studio, you probably have Viya 3.5 or an older release of Viya 4.

Is there a published side-by-side comparison for planning a move from EG to Studio (not on Viya)?

How does SAS studio in SAS 9.4 differ from SAS Studio in SAS Viya?

Hopefully this will help: https://support.sas.com/software/products/sas-studio/faq/SASStudio_vsEG.htm

Is SAS Studio included in our SAS 9.4 license?

Yes, SAS Studio (v3.x) is included with every 9.4 license.

Does SAS Studio only work with Viya? Do you need to license Viya to get SAS Studio?

SAS Studio ships with both SAS 9.4 and Viya, so no, you do not need to license Viya to get SAS Studio. However, there are differences in capabilities between the two. For example, the newer flow building capabilities Amy demoed are only in SAS Studio on Viya 4.

We don't currently have Viya. Do we need to move to Viya in order to get SAS Studio? Or can we get SAS Studio for our SAS 9.4 licenses?

SAS Studio (v3.x) is included with every 9.4 license.

Does Viya have release naming conventions and if so what is the current release?

Yes, there is a release naming convention for our monthly Viya 4 releases. As of tomorrow, the latest Stable release will be 2021.2.1 and the latest LTS release will be 2021.2.

Where is the code in SAS Viya SAS Studio physically located?

In SAS Studio, you can store code as .sas files in the SAS Compute Server filesystem or in the SAS Content space (same logical storage used by SAS Drive and other SAS web apps, backed by Postgres database).

Can Viya 3.5 upgrade to 4.0 where the features shown are available?

Yes, there is an upgrade path from Viya 3.5 to Viya 4. Yes, the flow building features Amy showed are new to SAS Studio on Viya 4.

If both SAS Viya and SAS Studio are accessed via a web browser, what's the difference between them?

What is the difference between SAS Viya and SAS Studio?

SAS Viya is the overall platform.  SAS Studio is an application within the Viya platform.  (Earlier versions of SAS Studio were also in the 9.4 platform and in the Viya 3.5 platform.)

But EG does not work with Viya?

SAS Enterprise Guide is not a Viya application but SAS Enterprise Guide on 9.4 can connect to SAS Viya and submit code there.  Most of the 9.4 SAS applications can connect to Viya like it’s a remote server.

Can SAS EG work with SAS Viya 2021.X without any other SAS 9.4 installation?

No, sorry, SAS Enterprise Guide is only available in a 9.4 deployment.  As mentioned, it can connect remotely to SAS Viya but cannot be installed in a Viya deployment.

Are the SAS studio updates you're referring to available on non-cloud installations?

Yes.  SAS Viya is based on container technology which can be run on multiple platforms.

Will there be a newer version for SAS Display Manager than SAS 9.4?

There will likely be additional 9.4 maintenance releases, but there are currently no plans for additional enhancements to SAS Display Manager.

If I'm on EG 8.3, what is the peer version of Studio or how do I check?

EG 8.3 is the latest version of EG and is on 9.9. The latest version of SAS Studio on SAS 9.4 is SAS Studio 3.81. However, there are several newer SAS Studio versions on Viya 3.5 (ex. Studio 5.2) and the latest CI/CD versions on Viya 4 (ex. 2021.1.6).

SAS Studio flow with PROC PYTHON; does it need VDMML license?

No additional license is needed. The Python step available in every SAS Studio version on Viya 4 starting with release 2021.1.6 (Oct 2021).

Does SAS Studio interact with Git and GitHub?

Please Google that because we've got some great papers on it. Both Enterprise Guide and SAS Studio have Git interfaces. What they're actually using behind the scenes, for the most part, are SAS functions that do Git operations, so you can actually programmatically interact with Git. All of that was added in 9.4M6 and it's also part of SAS Viya. We’ve got a really nice interface to allow you to commit, do pushes and pulls, C diffs, so there's a lot that you can do, and hopefully that's something that people will use.

Is there any work to allow SAS to be integrated with/play with VSCode? Currently it seems I can only use VSCode as a glorified text editor -- I still need to manually submit my code after the fact.

Yes! We are actively exploring an official VSCode plug-in for SAS.

We use EG to create our datasets referenced by Viya reports. These are scheduled to run every morning. Does that capability exist with SAS Studio?

Yes, SAS Studio on Viya provides scheduling capability.

For a brand new SAS developer (exp in other tools), which tool would you suggest starting in? Go right into SAS Studio?

My advice has a lot to do with where you are in terms of your own cloud journey. We're putting a lot of our eggs in the Studio basket, so we're trying to push the developer to that, and so that's where the bulk of the new features are coming, and that's where I think we've got a lot of really cool stuff. But if desktop is still kind of heavily used at your site, there's an awful lot to be said for SAS Enterprise Guide and what can be done with it. So, it’s a decision based on where you are in terms of where your assets are. We're trying to make everyone happy and it’s always kind of a fun thing.

What is the actual state of migrating EG projects into SAS Studio?

The best answer to that is to get that content assessment tool because it's updated every month. The content assessment tool, when you run it, pretty much will go through what you've got and will tell you what’s migratable and to what. There is documentation if you take a look, but honestly, seeing your own stuff in content assessment is probably the best way of doing it. The real summary is where everything ends up going to code and then we are slowly working our way towards making as much like-to-like. Right now, we've gotten most of the query work done for like-to-like and we're in the process of working on the import stuff.

With SAS EG you could use prompts, with SAS Studio, a license is needed for SAS Studio Analyst to be able to create custom steps?

The ability to create custom steps is available in all releases of SAS Studio on Viya.  SAS Studio Analyst adds the point-and-click designer to create prompts (versus creating them via JSON directly) and adds the ability to use custom steps in a flow.

There’s work that we're doing right now to try to bring in prompts from version 9 into Studio. That’s one of the things we are excited about is the ability to generate user interfaces. So, putting a nice user experience on top of code that you've written. That new interface, Json based format, is really the replacement for V9 prompt. We’ve already done a decent amount of work on enabling the migration of those prompts from V9 store processes into this new format, which is again a more flexible Json format for creating custom UI's. It will allow you, for example, to do things like build custom steps which are our new tasks. We do have certainly a lot of work that's going on to make sure that the value you get from prompts is still available in Viya 4. Not just still available but more robust than it was before.

Is the JSON-based prompt interface replacing the XML apache velocity interface? Is the JSON interface available as a front end form builder for Job Execution Server in Viya 4?

Yes, the JSON-based prompt interface (used for SAS Studio custom steps) will eventually replace the XML Velocity interface (used for SAS Studio tasks and Viya job prompts). We already have a nice WYSIWYG designer that generates the newer format, so you can design interfaces with a canvas, rather than having to manually write the markup. We do expect at some point in the future for this designer to also be available for generating forms for Jobs.

Is there an R version of Proc Python?

Not yet.

Does Viya interface with R and how does that work?

We don't have the same functionality yet in Studio like we do or for Python because we don't yet have a PROC R like we have a PROC PYTHON that we can front end. There's certainly R functionality and SAS IML, but we are anxiously awaiting some additional R support so that we can add more. To look even further ahead, we're hoping Studio becomes a fairly language-agnostic or language-friendly, so whatever languages are going to be supported, we're hoping to provide steps and editors for those.  Keep in mind that there is integration with R (and Python and other languages) outside of the SAS language via APIs in SAS Viya – see developer.sas.com for more information.

Is there a timeline when SAS will end SAS EG support?

Enterprise Guide is going to be supported for a very, very long time. It will not end anytime soon. That's the easiest way to say it. It's an extremely popular product. We’ve got staff actively working on keeping the security fixes in place. We should be honest here though; we're not actively working on new features. Basically, we're real proud of EG8 and we have folks that are actively working on keeping it up to date as the 9.4 platform is updated.

If I've been using base SAS for a long time and more recently Enterprise Guide, what's the best way to familiarize myself with Studio?

My advice would be, if you have a good relationship with your SAS administrator, just ask them for the URL to Studio or ask them to configure it if it’s not already (because again, it's free! Studio’s part of 9.4). If you can't get your administrator to configure it get the URL, one of the things you can do is make use of SAS OnDemand for Academics. That has a Studio interface as part of it to be able to play around. But again, the good news is there really shouldn't be a learning curve per say, because once you get in, it should look pretty familiar. Honestly, in my experience, the hardest part is just understanding, “Where are my files?” and “What server am I using?” and “where's the data that I'm trying to get ahold of?”.

I am interested in how the lineage views work in SAS Studio, compared to DI Studio in SAS 9.4. Can you show us some of that?

That’s a great question and actually highlights one of the benefits of SAS Studio over Enterprise Guide. Enterprise Guide did not integrate with Lineage, and so with SAS Studio being a web application, it's a lot easier for us to integrate with the other SAS web applications including Lineage. So right now, when you create flows in SAS studio, the relationships between those nodes in the flows get registered in Lineage, and then you can go to the Lineage viewer and see, for example, tables that are used in flows, steps that are used in flows, etc. And so, that is one of the big benefits of SAS Studio over Enterprise Guide is being able to integrate more fully with the entire platform.

Does the SAS desktop version (the one on the far left) have git integration?

The SAS Windowing Environment (SAS Display Manager – PC SAS) does not have a Git interface like SAS Studio and SAS Enterprise Guide does.  However, if you have 9.4M6 or later, you have access to the Git DATA step functions that you can use in your SAS programs.

What about performance when a query does takes 40 minutes to run? Is it better performance on Studio because I run EG queries on the SAS server?

In general performance is similar between SAS Studio and SAS Enterprise Guide.  The bulk of processing time is running code on the SAS server and it’s largely irrelevant which application submitted the code.  If you have issues with network latency, then it’s possible SAS Studio will be more efficient since it sits with the SAS server where EG often does not.

Are there security concerns with the confidential data we use in the browser based SAS Studio?

No. With SAS Studio, the security of data accessed by the SAS Server is the same as the security using remote access using SAS EG or the SAS Windowing Environment (Display Manager). SAS Studio is a web application that runs on the SAS Server and displays the developer interface through the web browser on client computers. SAS programmers submit SAS code from any device that has a web browser, and connectivity to the SAS Server. Users of SAS Studio can submit SAS code to the SAS Server the same way they submit SAS code to the SAS Server using SAS DMS.

Recommended Resources

SAS Studio & SAS Enterprise Guide Comparison Chart

Migrating to SAS Studio on SAS Viya

Accelerate Your Migration to SAS Viya

SAS Studio Community

SAS Learning Conference

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