How long has Data Management been in it's current form?

[stricktj]

To help set customer expectations on how long this product has been around, I have been trying to locate some dates. Searching Google shows current releases, but not the 1.0. Also, The acquisition of DataFlux is mentioned on the wiki around 2000. How much experience in terms of years would a consultant or employee expect to have with this product? Remember hearing about people claiming '10 yrs of experience with Java' when it was only 5 yrs old? [Update: Expanded 'DM' to 'Data Management' for clarification. With its current GUI, mix of components, etc., how much experience could have accumulated?] [Update 2: I posted in this forum as a target for the DM platform with its components and capabilities.]

[Reeza]

Are you looking for how long DataFlux specifically has been around? Or SAS Base?

[ballardw]

If by DM you mean "Display Manager" then DM was introduced with SAS 5 but I didn't see it at that version because I only worked on mainframes and batch jobs. The curret Base SAS DM looks a lot like the one for SAS 6.

SAS has been around since 1966 to 76 at North Carlina State University and incorporated in 1976: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_(software)

[Reeza]

Data Management is a subject area not a product. DM functions have been around for as long as SAS, but DataFlux is more recent. Most likely stemming from a demand for specific GUI functionality. FWIW understanding the DM concepts is more important than knowing a specific tool IMO.  

[stricktj]

"Data Management is a subject area not a product."

Well, I think it can be considered both. I agree that understanding the paradigm is of greater importance. I chose to post to this forum because the selections from the drop-down menu seem product-oriented. A customer is interested in accurate technical architectures using the precise moving pieces of SAS DM especially since another team used another product from the Gartner upper right quadrant and that implementation is available for comparison. Knowing DM as a subject area is not the question, but rather: what exact components within the DM platform (which costs X dollars) provide which functionality and how do those pieces fit together. How long has the current architecture existed in its present form? We might consider an architect with 2 yrs experience in the SAS DM platform...5 yrs...10 yrs with this exact mix of technical components and knowing all the nuances?

[RonAgresta · Accepted solution]

We can think about "SAS Data Management" in a lot of ways:

• SAS has had data access and transformation capabilities for decades. I'm thinking of things here like DATA step functions and SAS/ACCESS engines.
• SAS has also had GUI-driven data management applications like SAS Data Integration Studio for more than 10 years with some earlier forms of this application going back even further. SAS Data Integration Studio generates SAS code--the same code covered in the first bullet but you can build your data flows visually with this generally batch-oriented tool.
• DataFlux was acquired by SAS in 2000. DataFlux developed its own set of data management applications that were primarily GUI-driven. These applications integrated with SAS data management capabilities in various ways but were stronger in areas like data profiling, data qualty, and real-time data management.
• About 5 years ago, DataFlux as a subsidiary was wound down and staff and technologies were brought fully into SAS. This resulted in a number of product offerings that bundled SAS and DataFlux applications together. To make things more confusing, one of these offerings is called "SAS Data Management" and it has both a "Standard" version and an "Advanced" version.
• I should mention as well that some SAS solutions have their own data management capabilities that may or may not be using the technologies I described above.

To get a feel for what functionality is available in SAS' various data management offerings today, take a look at the Data Management Overview.

As you can see, it's possible to have SAS code skills for data management that go back 25 or more years and it's also possible to have SAS Data Integration or "DataFlux Data Management Platform" experience that goes back 15 years or more.

Ron

[stricktj]

Excellent!