Platform and Security related Updates in SAS 9.4 M6
First release of SAS 9.4 M6 shipped back in November 2018. After that there have been multiple releases in May, June, November 2019 and latest being in February 2020.
In this post I will list down few things from platform perspective on why to upgrade to 9.4 M6.
1) End of Flash Support:
Adobe announced end of life status for Flash by end of 2020. Most of the browsers have already disabled flash. If you have SAS Solutions deployed at your site that has Flash dependencies then in this release they are upgraded to HTML 5. This technical paper lists down the products that are dependent on Flash and planned availability for an alternative. Modernizing Your SAS® UIs: Removing Dependencies on Adobe Flash
2) Changes to SAS Environment Manager Administration
If your happen to administer SAS Visual Analytics at your site, LASR servers can now be administered using SAS EVM Administration. Previously associated functionality with VA Administrator has been moved to this page. For the other options too there is a significant improvement on the UI and navigation.
Here's a preview of the Administrator view:
Source: SAS Environment Manager Administration
3) Updates to Security:
Updates to multiple third-party security vulnerabilities have been addressed in this release. Click here for a list of security vulnerabilities addressed in M6. Check the SAS Security Bulletins for information related to different vulnerabilities.
4) Updates to Middle-Tier Components:
In this release SAS Ships Private JRE based on Java 8. Click here to read SAS 9.4 support for Java.
Other components that constitute of Mid-Tier architecture are also upgraded to a new version. Snap below of the upgraded products and their version:
Apache 2.2.x is already in end-of-life status.
Source: What’s New in SAS® 9.4
5) GIT Integration:
One of the many things that a modern platform is looking for is to adopt DevOps practices. In this release GIT functions and plug-ins have been integrated with SAS and it's clients Enterprise Guide, Data Integration Studio and SAS Studio making it seamless for programmers to use version control. Refer to this blog post on Using built-in Git operations in SAS
While the decision to upgrade onto newer version could differ case by case, this list can add on to it from the platform side of things. If you have already upgraded to M6 or if you have more items that can be added to this list, feel free to comment and share.
Thank you for your time in reading this post.
Anand Vyas
Thakral One
