SAS Viya is delivered continuously, with a new release each month so customers can stay current on bug fixes and security patches and get the latest, greatest version of the software.
Beginning in September 2022, SAS Viya release numbers are changing to a simple two-level value: four-digit year, followed by a period and two-digit month. For example, the Stable release in September 2022 is versioned as Stable 2022.09. The names of releases prior to September 2022 are not affected by the name changes and will continue to be available in supporting systems and tools until they fall out of support. See Releases and Versions in SAS® Viya® Operations for a list of recent release cadences.
What is continuous delivery?
Continuous Delivery is a software engineering approach in which Research and Development teams produce software in short cycles, ensuring that the software can be built, tested, and delivered faster and more frequently. The release cycles in continuous delivery systems are called cadences.
What cadences can SAS Viya customers select for continuous delivery?
SAS offers two release cadences for SAS Viya: Stable and Long-Term Support.
Stable
This is a monthly release that provides the most up-to-date features, enhancements, bug fixes, and security patches. Stable release version numbers follow this pattern: YYYY.MM (example: Stable 2023.03 would release in March 2023).
This cadence is recommended for customers who want frequent updates to their software so they can stay current with the pace of software delivery. Customers can take this release as soon as it is available each month or wait up to three months to update to any of the three newer Stable releases in a rolling window of support. Even if they do not update every month, customers continuously get selected software patches that have been deemed to be critical.
Long-Term Support
This is a semi-annual release that aggregates features, enhancements, bug fixes, and security patches included in Stable cadences. The software released in this cadence does not include any features or enhancements from the previous month to two months, but does include selected bug fixes and security patches for that period. Therefore, the code base for the Long-Term Support cadence is identical to the code base of the Stable from which it is seeded, plus any bug fixes and security patches deemed important enough to be included. Starting in September 2022, Long-Term Support version numbers share the cadence number of the Stable release from which they are seeded. For example, Long-Term Support 2022.09, released in November 2022, is based on Stable 2022.09, released in September 2022.
This cadence is recommended for customers who prefer not to update their software too frequently because they need to allow more time to prepare for upgrades to new feature versions. They may have a lot of custom code that is integrated with SAS Viya that has to be tested or they may have models that have to be recertified, which is time-consuming. Customers can take this release as soon as it is available or wait up to almost two years to update to any of the three newer Long-Term Support versions in a rolling window of support. During that period, however, their software will still receive selected patches that have been deemed critical.
For more information, see the SAS Viya support policy.
