Watch this Ask the Expert session to explore and learn how to make the most of your data and AI investment.
In this webinar, you will learn how to:
- Understand the core qualities and basic architecture of SAS Viya.
- Use the suite of SAS Viya applications to manage and explore data, develop models and deploy insights.
- Develop code using either SAS or Python in SAS Viya.
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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
Is there a way to transfer files via sftp?
Data transfer can be accomplished using the file transfer method of your choice directly to the file system where your SAS server is running. There is also a straightforward way to upload files in SAS Studio. However, you may encounter file size limitations when uploading larger files, and it is up to the administrator to configure how this is managed.
I have a report that someone prepared prior to me joining the company, it is delivered in Excel, but the data comes from SAS Viya. I am looking to find the most efficient way to connect the two and/or re-create this report in Excel as I want to move toward automation for this report. Or simply refresh the data from SAS Viya. I know my company has the option to connect SAS Viya to Microsoft Excel. What suggestions do you have and what documentation can you point me to for help with this?
In the free SAS Viya overview course, I would recommend you watch two videos to get started:
- Explore and Visualize with SAS Visual Analytics will show you how to build an interactive report.
- Share SAS Content with SAS for Microsoft 365 will show you how to insert report pages and objects into Microsoft applications, including Excel, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint.
The same videos are also available on YouTube and the SAS Video Portal. If you would like to dive deeper into these topics, we have full courses on SAS Visual Analytics and SAS for Microsoft 365.
Does the volume of the data loaded into a CAS table affect the performance of the VA report?
The advantage of CAS is that data is loaded into memory and work is distributed among multiple threads, therefore calculations performed behind the scenes are greatly accelerated. But it is possible that the volume of data could get to large that performance may be impacted. This depends on the scale of your system, the data, and what you are trying to build in Visual Analytics. If performance becomes an issue, SAS will work with you to help optimize it.
Does SAS Viya also have an option to anonymize data before exploration?
Yes, there is a step in SAS Studio named Mask Data. See this blog post for more information.
If my company has Enterprise Guide, are all SAS Viya modules available?
Not necessarily - SAS Enterprise Guide is an application that can connect to either SAS 9 or SAS Viya behind the scenes. You must have SAS Viya licensed to use the applications demonstrated in the webinar. If you do have SAS Viya, you can use Enterprise Guide to connect to the Viya Compute and CAS servers. This means you can continue to work within Enterprise Guide, allowing you to perform your usual tasks—whether that's writing code or building projects.
I was wondering if in SAS Viya there is a way to lock select scripts so that only certain users have write access and the rest have read access?
Yes, file access is permissions based. Read and write can be granted separately.
How do we store any output file (csv, xlsx) in SAS Viya?
If you have a CAS (in-memory) table that you would like to save as a csv or xlsx file, you can use PROC CASUTIL and the SAVE statement.
If you have a SAS table in a library, you can use PROC EXPORT.
If you have an output report, you can use the Output Delivery System and standard ODS statements.
What happens if the password for the Oracle database connection is changed? Does this affect the tables loaded in CAS?
Yes, you will still have access to the CAS table that’s already loaded in memory even if the Oracle password changes. But you will not be able to reload or update it from Oracle until the credentials are fixed.
Do I build machine learning and AI models using SAS Visual Analytics or SAS Model Studio?
SAS Visual Analytics allows you do build and customize models, however the more powerful and complete application for model development and comparison is SAS Model Studio.
I am looking for a repository where we can store files permanently that can be accessed by winscp/putty.
If your Viya deployment gives you SSH access to the SAS nodes, then the Linux file system is the simplest permanent storage location. Files in these locations are permanent, are accessible using WinSCP (via SFTP), can be assigned to CAS using path-based CASlibs, and can be referenced in SAS code with filename or libname statements.
Recommended Resources
SAS Viya Overview Course
SAS Viya Quick Start Tutorials
Use & Optimize Your Software
SAS Support Community – SAS Viya
Please see additional resources in the attached slide deck.
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