Watch this Ask the Expert session to learn what’s new about SAS Analytics Pro Advanced Programming – for new and current users.
Watch the webinar
You will learn:
- How to deploy SAS Analytics Pro.
- How SAS Analytics Pro runs in different environments, using containers and in the cloud.
- How SAS Analytics Pro integrates with Python, GitHub and databases.
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 difference between advanced programming and pro advanced programming?
There is the analytics pro and there is the analytics Pro advanced programming. Analytics Pro is pretty much the same product but with less packages. It would be the SAS base, SAS stat and graph with all the access engines and SAS studio. Then there is this SAS Analytics Pro advanced programming, which is what we were talking about here today, which is those same base stat graph Studio products plus the IML, QC, OR and ETS. It's pretty much the same. What it adds is more capabilities for different use cases.
Analytics Pro: BASE SAS SAS/STAT® SAS/GRAPH® SAS/SECURE™ SAS/ACCESS®* Analytics Pro Advanced Programming: BASE SAS SAS/STAT® SAS/GRAPH® SAS/SECURE™ SAS/ACCESS®* With additional capabilities: SAS/ETS® SAS/OR® SAS/QC® SAS/IML® *all SAS Viya access engines included. This blog shares additional information as well! https://blogs.sas.com/content/sgf/2022/06/06/introducing-analytics-pro-advanced-programming/
Are there SAS Analytics Pro Advanced programming courses provided by SAS Institute on the SAS YouTube channel?
Check out some of the training and support resources here! https://support.sas.com/en/software/analytics-pro-support.html
What is the annual license fee of the product? If I don't need all packages, can I choose a subset of packages within the product and pay for them only?
Unfortunately, we can't answer pricing questions ourselves. Please contact your SAS account manager and they will respond to your question. Also, if you're not sure who or your organization doesn't have an account manager, you can submit your question here: https://www.sas.com/en_us/software/how-to-buy/request-price-quote.html
I use a Mac and SAS is not supported on MacOS, right?
It used to be right, but it's not anymore. With this product, since it runs on container and you can have the Docker container running in different operating systems, you can deploy it on Mac OS as well. The only caveat there is that it doesn't run on the newer versions of MacBook that come with the M1 and M2 ship chips. If you have the Intel versions of MacBook, you can run it. I ran it on this demonstration that you just saw, and it runs seamlessly. There is no difference between what you would do in Python and Windows or Mac or Linux.
Am I limited to the number of cores I initially license?
No, you're not limited to the number of cores. You're free to choose what you want to do. In my example, since the software is licensed by number of users, it's a license on end user basis, you don't have any threshold in the number of cores that you can deploy. That's why in my demonstration, I have a small development environment on my computer just using a sample of the data. When I push it to Azure and I have the software deployed there, I can have 80 cores if I want to run the software in there. I run the process that I need to at the end. If I don't need 80 cores anymore, I can downgrade it to four cores if I want. SAS is not going to monitor that, so you're free to choose how many cores you want to use.
Since you mentioned Containers, do I need to be a Kubernetes expert to get the software up and running?
Not necessarily, unless you want to deploy the software using Co BERNADIS. If you want to have a single container running and add multiple users to that container, you can do that easily with the quick start, and you can get the software up and running in like 5 to 10 minutes depending on your Internet connection. You don't necessarily need to be an expert.
How do I deploy the software on the cloud?
There are two options to do that or maybe three. When you go to the sales documentation, SAS is going to give you 2 main options. First you have the option to deploy the software using a quick start. The quick start uses a tool that was created to help you deploy the software. It means you're going to have to have a virtual machine on the cloud of preference. Inside that virtual machine, you're going to download the Docker images for the containers and then you're going to run this quick start, which is going to spin up the container and get the software up and running.
The second option is to do a custom deployment if you want to add and mount to different volumes. If you want to add different users and you want to create, for example, active directory, or if you want to connect to a Python environment or to different databases, all those things you can do on the custom deployment and you can do it the way you want. SAS will provide you the step by step on how to do it. The third option would be to deploy the software as a Kubernetes application. To do that, you need to know a little bit of Kubernetes and you need to know a little bit of the cloud environment that you're deploying the software on.
Can I code in Python using this offer?
Yes, we saw an example on the demonstration on how to do it. You can bring in and use Proc Python. You paste your Python code, and you have this mechanism of sending data in and out of the Python process to assess library as well. It's very easy to use and configure. You can maintain the Python environment separately. You also have the option to use SASpy as the Python package to access the container or the Analytics Pro deployment as well, so there is a lot that can be done with Python in this product.
Can I use SAS Enterprise Guide with this product?
Unfortunately, the answer is no, you cannot use enterprise guide with this offering. We do have a 9.4 environment offering that allows you to use enterprise guide. You can continue to use that, but unfortunately this product that we demonstrated today is not capable of connecting to enterprise guide.
When SAS Analytics Pro operates in the cloud, are sensitive data or work products stored in the cloud?
it depends. If the sensitive data that you have is on the data center or on the cloud or anywhere that it's hosted and you can run SAS close to it, it doesn't necessarily need to be the cloud. SAS, in this case, is going to where the data is after you bring that data to the SAS platform. So, it's either cloud or desktop. It's going to get stored on the temporary location that you specified for the work library. Or you can use the software to store data on the cloud, process it in there, save it in there. It really depends on the type of scenarios that you have.
Is there no way to run the code "locally" when you don't have access to network?
In the first part of the demo, I was running the software on my local computer, on my MacBook, so it was connected to the Internet because I was bringing in data from a remote location and I was sending code to GitHub. But, for example, if I had all the code and all the data that I needed for my analysis on my computer, I don't need to connect to the Internet. So, I could be on an airplane and running SAS code, which would be fancy. But it really depends on the scenario that you have. If you already have everything in one in your computer, you don't need access to the Internet. If you need to share things to the world or if you need to access data that is saved remotely, then you need the Internet, but it works fine without it.
Is this the same for SAS Viya environment?
For the SAS Viya environment, the software also runs on Kubernetes and containers, but it comes with different products that are more visual. All the visual analytics, visual data mining and machine learning, intelligent decisioning, visual text analytics, all these products that are visual and contains different types of processes and use cases that you can rely on. Those are part of the SAS Viya deployment, which is going to be a bigger deployment and you can only run it on a server. In this case, it's a small scoped part of the platform that allows you to deploy either on your computer or on the servers or on the cloud.
Cost per user, say 10 then 100?
For licensing questions and pricing, I recommend getting in contact with your account representative if you are a current customer. If you are a new customer, you can contact us through the website, and they will assign an account executive to help you.
If SAS Analytics is updated monthly, how can the system be kept in a validated state?
We would need to clarify what validated state means in this case. But if you mean to have the software concisely running on the server, SAS is making sure that is happening as part of what we call the CI CD process, or the continuous integration, continuous delivery. We will make sure that all the tests run when you migrate to a newer version and that all the tasks are backward compatible. SAS is doing that work for you now if you think about it on like the validation from a life sciences or health care perspective where you need to have a validated environment that unfortunately I don't think it's possible to have today on this product specifically.
Can PRO be customized to only have the packages I need?
You have two options. One is the analytics pro only with the stats-based graph. The other option is the advanced programming. That's what we saw today. You cannot customize and license in this case for this specific version, just like for example the IML package. We don't allow that on this specific package. We do allow that on the previous version, which is the SAS Analytics Pro 94. 99.4 version there you can license things separately.
Is this product available outside Viya, i.e., running on SAS 9.4?
This product is available outside of Viya. We say that there is a Viya component to it because, internally, in terms of the code that SAS R& D is developing, it's pretty much coming from the same place. But it's not a Viya product itself, though there is a big distinction between what Viya is and what you can do there and here in Analytics Pro advanced programming. There are some similarities, but in this case they're very different in terms of scope.
Are there different licenses for pro and Viya?
Yes, there are. They are completely different pricing metrics and deployments and functionality wise.
Is it possible to have XCMD option enabled?
Yes, you can run X command in the software. You just need to change one thing when you're spinning out the software. And that's very simple. It's well documented on how to do that.
SAS Help Center: Enable Use of the X Command
Does Environment Manager ship with APro?
Not this version. It doesn't come with the environment manager. All the management of the platform is done through Docker container or Kubernetes, depending on what you're using.
Is there API to integrate SAS Analytics Pro with another business application? If not, then how to integrate SAS Analytics Pro with other applications?
That's a great question and I'm happy to say that I have an answer for that because I wrote a couple of blogs a couple months ago on how to do that. Running CMS Risk Adjustment Models via API with SAS Analytics Pro (Viya) on Azure - SAS Users The analytics pro that we saw today doesn't have an API layer out-of-the-box. But since it's a container and you can connect to the container via the SAS Python package, if you know a little bit of Python, you can hack it a little bit to create, for example, a flask or a fast API application that connects to the sales environment, and you can pass data back and forth through API calls to the container and I'm happy to share the link.
Recommended Resources
Analytics Pro modernization brochure
SAS Analytics Pro
Analytics Pro Blogs
Running CMS Risk Adjustment Models via API with SAS Analytics Pro (Viya) on Azure
Running CMS-HCC Risk Adjustment models with SAS Analytics Pro on Viya
SAS Analytics Pro on Viya Installation
Introducing Analytics Pro Advanced Programming: The power of SAS on your desktop
Moving from SAS®9 to SAS® Viya®
Please see additional resources in the attached slide deck.
Want more tips? Be sure to subscribe to the Ask the Expert board to receive follow up Q&A, slides and recordings from other SAS Ask the Expert webinars.
Click image to register for webinar