Prepare Your SAS Visual Analytics on SAS 9 for Adobe Flash End of Life: Q&A, Slides, Recording
Did you miss the Ask the Expert session on Adobe Flash end of life for SAS Visual Analytics users on SAS 9? Not to worry, you can catch it on-demand at your leisure.
Prepare your SAS Visual Analytics deployment on SAS®9 for Adobe Flash end of life on Dec. 31. We cover two update paths and review case studies from customers who have already transitioned. During this webinar, you will learn:
- Upgrade or migration options for Adobe Flash end of life.
- Details for two update paths: SAS Visual Analytics 7.5 on SAS®9, or SAS Visual Analytics on SAS® Viya®.
- From case studies of customers that have already made the transition.
- Your next steps to plan your transition.
Here are the questions from the Q&A segment held at the end of the webinar. The slides from the webinar are attached.
What if we cannot upgrade or migrate before December 31, 2020?
After December 31, 2020 browsers will no longer run Adobe Flash plugin. Consequently, applications such as SAS Visual Analytics that depend on Flash will stop working. You can try to go back to an older version of the browser to manage and view your reports, but it is better to migrate so you can use the latest browser version with the latest security patches.
How long will a migration/upgrade take?
Each case is different. It depends on the type of migration and what other SAS software deployed at your site. Promotion is the quickest. It is a consulting process where you must discuss and plan accordingly. Could be a few days at the shortest and on up from there.
Will my reports look the same after the upgrade or migration?
It’s two different technologies, Flash vs. HTML5 that don’t necessarily map one to one. We have tried to keep the reports as close as possible, but there may be some differences. You should review the new reports and adjust as needed. Also, the SAS Visual Analytics release that you are migrating to may offer new enhancements that you might want to take advantage of, so reviewing the reports after migration could be a good idea.
If for some reason a group misses the Dec 31st deadline to migrate, does this mean the reports in SAS VA (where Adobe Flash is used) would no longer be accessible?
No. If you miss the December 31 deadline to migrate, you will be able to access the reports if you don’t update your browser. If your browser is already giving you a warning that Flash will not work as of Dec. 31st then your browser will not allow you to access the reports.
The browser vendors have stated that they will block the Adobe Flash Player and content after December 31st. You can ask IT to backdate browsers, allowing the flash components to be viewable in the browsers. We have heard that some client’s IT team is creating special remote desktops behind firewalls with backdated browsers for report viewers. However, we have heard this does not work well for large numbers of users. This also means that the backdated browser will not receive other security patches for the browser.
Is there any option to minimize down time during upgrade in place?
Planning is key to minimize downtime. You should use the tool that SAS provides (system evaluation tool) to see where potential pitfalls might be. If you have other SAS products in addition to SAS Visual Analytics, all those products will move at the same time, so you need to understand what the impacts are and how to do it. 6 hours is as fast as we’ve seen it done. It’s about understanding what is going to happen and it is ideal to run a test in a second environment. Runs as fast as a normal SAS install. The further you are jumping in your upgrade can also make it take longer.
Anything else to add regarding other clients outside of VA? Are other products impacted, if so which ones? I’m specifically interested in base, 9.4m6, EG, SAS Studio (Web Studio), PLM, SMC
The list of SAS products with Adobe Flash dependency has more than 100 offerings. SAS is committed to providing customers non-flash options prior to Adobe Flash announced end-of-life. None of the products listed on the question depend on Flash, so they will not be impacted.
Regarding just reports for a 7.4 to 7.5 migration, should we have any issues with the older reports working on 7.5 like custom themes/calculated items/custom graphs?
Both migration options (SAS Visual Analytics 7.5 and 8.5) provide full replacement value. Particularly for migration from SAS Visual Analytics 7.4 to 7.5, there are a few know differences:
- Many SAS Visual Analytics 7.4 fonts are not available in 7.5. SAS Visual Analytics 7.4 has more than 370 fonts, while 7.5 have exactly 34 types of fonts. Fonts from SAS Visual Analytics 7.4 that are not mapped to 7.5 may affect the report layout, as objects may shift around due to different font sizes.
- Custom themes
- SAS Visual Analytics 7.4 Network Diagram object is referred to as the Network Analysis object in SAS Visual Analytics 7.5. In the Network Analysis object, the node layout algorithm has changed, and the positions of nodes might be different. Custom node layouts from reports that were created in previous releases are not migrated.
- The Sankey diagram object of SAS Visual Analytics 7.4 is referred to as the Path Analysis object in SAS Visual Analytics 7.5. In the Path Analysis object, path weights are aggregated differently from how they were aggregated in the SAS Visual Analytics 7.4 Sankey diagram. The values for each path are summarized before the path weight values are aggregated for each link.
For more information on functional comparison for the latest SAS Visual Analytics versions, please go to page 12 here: https://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/support/en/technical-papers/sas9-4-sas-viya-functional-compariso...
Will SAS 9 eventually not be supported and if so, what is the timeline?
SAS 9 is the engine where many SAS products run on. There is currently nothing in the roadmap that specifies the lifetime of SAS 9. What we have are Support Levels by Product:
https://support.sas.com/en/technical-support/support-levels.html#m=sas-visual-analytics
Beginning from the production date of the release you are running you will have 5 years of standard support, after that you will automatically move into limited support.
If I have 3 tiers, metadata/compute/middle tiers, how will moving to SAS Viya version 8.5 from VA version 7.3 change my server tier layout?
The only option for moving from SAS Visual Analytics on SAS 9, which is the case of SAS Visual Analytics 7.3, to SAS Visual Analytics 8.5 on SAS Viya, is via Manual Migration (a.k.a. Promotion). The process consists of installing SAS Visual Analytics 8.5 software as a new deployment and then selectively promoting content. Because it’s a new independent deployment, you can choose to preserve the current tier topology or completely change it. The new topology does not affect the migration.
We have some reports that display 60,000 rows. Due to this limitation in HTML5 we currently use Adobe Flash. Are there limitations in SAS VA 7.5 or SAS Viya that will stop us from displaying 60,000 rows in reports?
Default system data limits exist and vary per object. For SAS Visual Analytics 7.5 they are documented here:
This is similar documentation for SAS Visual Analytics 8.5:
As noted in the SAS Visual Analytics 7.5 documentation, you can use the Override system data limit option to specify a different system data limit for an object. See Specify Options for an Object in SAS Visual Analytics: Working with Report Content.
Will 7.5 be the last version on 9.4?
We have no other versions of SAS Visual Analytics on SAS 9 planned at this time. However, that is subject to change. We will continue to monitor our customer’s experiences.
Is there any documentation on known issues with an upgrade in place to update a 9.4 M6 version (2019 ship event) to the latest Flash-free ship event?
Below are links to content as well as some general feedback, specific to upgrading in-place to Visual Analytics 7.5.
SAS Content Assessment tool
- Blog posting, “System Evaluation Tool Helps with SAS 9.4 Upgrade-in-Place Planning“ - https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/System-Evaluation-Tool-Helps-with-SAS-9-4-Upg...
- YouTube video “SAS 9.4 System Evaluation” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pML8H2pYS6Y&feature=youtu.be
Documentation
- What’s New section within the Guide to Software Updates - https://go.documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=whatsdiff&docsetTarget=upgradeswhatsnew94.htm&docsetVersi...
- In addition, read each section in the above documentation for the specific products your site has deployed
Visual Analytics specific
- Ensure they get the latest VA 7.5 hot fixes (likely happens anyway)
- Back up reports in SAS packages from SMC before the upgrade if at all possible, just in case
- General rule: Anticipate issues post upgrade, where reports look different, etc.
Is 7.5 going to be last version of SAS VA on 9.4? Should we be preparing to go to Viya within a couple years?
SAS Visual Analytics 7.5 is currently the last planned release on SAS 9.4. In order to take advantage of enhancements to VA features, customers should consider a transition to SAS Visual Analytics on SAS Viya.
If applicable, can you speak to the difference between SAS 9.4 (32 bit) vs. (64 bit). I do not have VA yet, just SAS 9.4 (32 bit). Will future SAS 9.4 upgrades include VA or Viya or will those tools remain optional?
SAS Visual Analytics is a client-server product supported on two SAS engines: SAS 9 and SAS Viya. While clients can run on 32 or 64-bit, server components are only supported on 64-bit architectures.
Windows to Linux. What are some of the pain points and lookouts?
The only migration option that supports changes in topology and OS family is Manual Migration (a.k.a. Promotion). Although Promotion is considered a low-risk migration option, there are limitation on the content that can be migrated. Here is a short list of the main ones:
- Data
- Custom formats
- Custom themes
- Visual Data Builder jobs
What were the issues encountered when going from VA 7.x to 8.3? (reference to the one of the use cases presented)
No issues were encountered in this particular use case. The only thing that required some rework was the slightly different syntax for loading tables in memory to take advantage of new functionality of CAS.
Does SAS have any documentation outlining the feature/capability differences between SAS VA 7.5 on SAS 9 and SAS VA 8.5 on SAS Viya? If so, how can we access it?
Yes. Point your browser to https://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/support/en/technical-papers/sas9-4-sas-viya-functional-compariso... and go to page 13 for a matrix comparing the latest SAS Visual Analytics versions.
Would this webinar be beneficial for users - i.e. non-IT people?
Parts of the presentation are oriented to those responsible for the VA environment. It will help you understand what option your organization has in order to remove the dependency on Flash. This could help you to ask the right questions to your administrators to make sure a plan is in place.
Who do I contact if I need help with my upgrade/migration?
Please, reach out to your Account Executive.
Recommended Resources
Technical Paper: Modernizing Your SAS UIs: Removing Dependencies on Adobe Flash
SAS Visual Analytics Products: HTML5 (Flash-Free) Interfaces
SAS Software and Its Use of the Adobe Flash Player
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