Leveraging SAS® Viya® to Improve Base SAS® Processes

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Did you miss the Ask the Expert session Leveraging SAS^® Viya^® to Improve Base SAS^® Processes? Not to worry, you can catch it on-demand at your leisure. I’ve attached the slides as well.

Watch the webinar

The SAS Platform is greatly enhanced by SAS Viya. In this session, the presenter will share his experiences in leveraging SAS Viya to improve Base SAS processes. Explore technical insights and implementation details to get your code CAS-enabled, achieving faster results. These are illustrated by real-life case studies.

In this session, you’ll learn the answers to questions such as:

• If a process cannot run in CAS, where does it run?
• What coding components are most frequently encountered in code reviews with customers?
• What are deployment options for SAS Viya?

Here’s a transcript of the Q&A segment held at the end of the session for ease of reference.

If a process cannot run in CAS where does it run?

This is a 2 part answer. If the coding compotent i.e. DATA Step, MEANS, TRANSPOSE… are CAS enabled and the source and target tables to that coding component are CAS tables then the process runs in CAS (fast). If the coding component is not CAS enabled or the source and or target tables are not in CAS then the process will run on the workspace server.

What coding components are most frequency encountered in the code review you have done with customers?

1. Macro code represents ~30% of the SAS code I have reviewed in the last 7 years
2. DATA Step represents ~30%
3. BY Statement Processing in DATA Step represents ~20%
4. Procedures FREQ, MEANS, REPORT, SUMMARY, TABULATE TRANSPOSE represents ~5% to10%
5. The SQL procedures represents ~10% to 25%
6. The SORT procedure represents ~10% to 25%  

What are the deployment options for SAS Viya?

1. SAS^® Cloud combines software, infrastructure, and services that are designed and managed by SAS for optimal performance and value.
2. SAS® on Cloud Providers provides cloud-deployable options that allow our customers to run SAS on almost any private, public, or hybrid cloud infrastructure.
3. On-Premise

Is the Scalable Performance Data Engine that is delivered with Base SAS supported in Viya?

Yes, it is. You can use the SPD Engine libref on the Viya workspace server to read and write SPD Engine tables. In addition, when you store your SPD Engine tables on HDFS you have 3 options in reading SPD Engine tables into CAS and written that CAS table back down to HDFS in SPD Engine format. For additional details review SAS Data Connector to SPD Engine Files and SAS Data Connect Accelerator for SPD Engine Files

Recommended Resources

• Course: Free SAS Viya Enablement
• Course: SAS Viya Learning Path
• Reading material:
• Parallel Programming with the DATA Step: Next Steps (2018)
• The following Base SAS procedures are CAS Enabled (2018)
• SAS^®Viya^™3: FedSQL Programming for SAS^® Cloud Analytic Services (2018)
• FedSQL Implicit Pass-Through Facility in CAS (2018)
• What’s New in SAS® Data Connectors for SAS® Viya® (2018)
• How to Emulate DESCENDING BY Variables in DATA Step Code that Runs Distributed in SAS® Viya™ (2018)
• DATA Step in SAS® Viya™: Essential New Features (2017)
• How to Emulate PROC APPEND in CAS (2017)
• Getting your SAS 9 code to run multi-threaded in SAS Viya 3.3 (2017)
• Jedi SAS Tricks - FedSQL Dictionary Tables (2017)
• Six reasons you should stop using the RANUNI function to generate random numbers (2013)

Trial: Get an early preview of SAS® Visual Analytics on SAS® Viya™

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