Watch this Ask the Expert session to learn about SAS Studio Flows and Steps on SAS Viya.
Watch the webinar
This webinar will include:
- Information about SAS Studio on Viya.
- Introduction to Studio Flows and how to build and use them.
- Introduction to Studio Steps, how to use them and create your own.
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
What is wrapper code?
Wrapper code is code that Enterprise Guide and SAS Studio have, which I call the “least common denominator code.” That's the code that's going to guarantee that it runs. So, for instance, there's some basic setup, options for validvarname, etc. You've probably seen that one before, which the client app needs set using a SAS macro variable and then using some SAS functions and so on. So, wrapper code is any code that is generated as part of a flow and, again, similar when you're running a task in Enterprise Guide because it does that too, that you didn't write, but that the application is writing.
Can we combine CAS tables and WORK tables in the Query node?
Yes, that will work BUT, see the following comment:
Comment: It's obvious that you should NOT mix Compute Server and Viya tables... Unless you want big CAS tables being transferred to your Compute Server environment?
Once you use a compute server table, it's automatically going to bring things all the way over to the SAS compute, so you're negating the value of using CAS, which is large data in memory. That's actually a very great point here. If you mix the two, you could conceivably be bringing in a very large table over. So, I'm going to say new best practice and agree with this comment to say OK, do your SAS 9 joins, etc. On SAS Compute and then load that table(s) into CAS and then do your exploitation from within CAS.
Can we suppress wrapper code? At what point would using the wrapper code be a primary (absolutely required) activity?
You can suppress it somewhat. There are some options in the tools, preferences area. You can show custom code, show generated. Right now, it's already suppressing some of the code, but you can’t suppress if the wrapper code for the flow.
What is SAS Engineer replacing?
It is targeted to replace Data Integration Studio, which is one of our components for doing ETL. Historically, people have used Enterprise Guide and PC/”Base SAS” to also perform ETL. We’re going to take some of that flow capability, some of that data cleansing and data quality work that was happening in that interface, and we're going to continually add to Engineer.
In what version of SAS Studio did Flows become available?
It was the April 2021 release, 2020.1.3.
How do flows work with version control, like Git? Is a .flw file a text format?
I am not an expert in GIT but I do know that the .flw file is a text file, specifically JSON. Conceivably you could use GIT here.
We are BASE SAS users and our organization is moving to SAS Viya, what are good SAS documents to review for installation and integration.
I would suggest going to support.sas.com or contacting your Account Executive or Customer Success Manager for information specific to your site.
Can SAS Studio within SAS 9.4 be set-up as a progressive web app?
Yes.
Can you share the link to the Custom Steps GitHub repository that was mentioned towards the start of the presentation?
I spoke too soon. As it stands today, this is not available to the general public. I believe we are doing further testing.
Will flows for SAS Studio be integrated in Viya 3.x?
No, they are only available starting in version 2020.1.3.
So, for DI Studio Jobs, SAS Studio would import a .SPK file? Yes.
And to transfer a DI application, you'd need create packages for all jobs?
Yes, but there is a command line utility that might make this easier to transfer in bulk.
Recommended Resources
SAS Studio page from sas.com
SAS Tutorial | Getting Started with SAS Studio on SAS Viya
Outlier detection, text analytics APIs, SAS Studio Analyst | SAS Viya Release Highlights 2020.1.4
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