New hotfix (A53005) for SAS Enterprise Guide 4.22

[ChrisHemedinger]

Greetings,

There is a new hotfix for SAS Enterprise Guide 4.22 (4.2, maint 2).

http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/HF2/A53.html#A53005

The fix addresses a few customer-reported issues. See the associated SAS Notes for the details.

Chris

[boschy]

Thanks Chris.

We will try to include this hotfix with our initial LAN deployment of EG 4.22, which is being built this week.

-Boschy

[dwd125]

boschy -

How do you plan on going about the inclusion of the hotfix during your rollout? What method/product are you using to push out the software?

[boschy]

We are working on this as I write this!

As mentioned by Chris, EG 4.2 must be installed via the SAS Deployment Wizard. My original install was not, and it was not 100% functional. The rough steps follow. You may do something different. This process is not in production yet at our site, either.

1. Create a SAS Depot on a network drive.

2. Run the deployment wizard in RECORD mode from a DOS prompt. Supply a filename for the response file. We saved ours in a depot directory.

3. From the main menu, select Install but not Configure. The tricky bit is picking SAS EG from the list of products. We selected EG and Integration Technologies Client.

4. Sooner or later, the wizard stops. There is no clear warning of this. However, we knew when the response file had been created.

5. To test a quiet deployment, I went to my PC and ran setup.exe -quiet -responsefile ""

6. Again, this takes a while. The only way to see that its finished is to look for EG 4.2 files under Program Files/SAS.

7. Applying the hotfix is then easy: .exe -silent

8. Desktop people are now creating an install package for the above commands. We will then test the whole thing. I don't know exactly what software they use, but it's one of the standard Windows methods via ZENworks.

Note that your EG users must have read access to the depot location. We're also told they must have LAN PC admin access, which ours do not, so we have to grant it somehow temporarily. The hotfix will also install in live mode as per the MIT document.

One nice feature is that the EG version details now show what hotfix was last applied, i.e. A53005.

Due to deadlines, we are not supplying default EG options or metadata specs via the XML file. But may do this later.

Hope that helps. The instructions are in the SAS Deployment Wizard PDF document, although it does not provide the above sequence of steps.

-Bosch-

Message was edited by: boschy

[boschy]

Just an update.

We've serious had problems installing EG4.22 on older PCs.

In the worst cases, when the System Requirements Wizard starts, the PC dies with Blue Screen of Death. The only fix is to rebuild the PC.

What's also a nuisance is the Depot, and granting temporary local admin access to SOE users who never usually have admin access. Because of this, we are not going to roll out Add-In for MS Office until clear causes/solutions are available.

-Boschy-

[boschy]

Another update.

A SAS consultant onsite doing installs and configs helped to identify the cause of the problem.

He identified which bits are installed by the System Requirements Wizard. Then we install each one separately from the relevant SAS Depot folders.

On problem Windows XP installs, the Microsoft.NET module (as I recall) failed to install, producing a Windows error message box. We believe this caused the silent install of EG from the Depot to fail and trigger reboots and/or blue screen of death.

The work-around is to install these components manually from the Depot, then install EG using the LAN install script as per normal. In other words, bypass the System Requirements Wizard.

The manual steps can be tested by running the Requirements Wizard manually. It should find that all required components are installed.

Our desktop techs may end up creating a separate install package for the required components and run it first in the main script.

-Bosch-

[Doc_Duke]

Maybe it is time to move up to 4.3. It supports some really nice new features for your programmers.

[boschy]

Yes indeed, Doc.

We're testing a new install package for EG V4.22, and I might chuck in the latest Dec 2010 hotfix as well before it gets rolled out.

Desktop support have also thrown us a curve ball recently....no business user is allowed to get PC admin access, even temporarily...hence the new install package.

V4.3 seems to have issues with Windows XP, and also slight compatibility issues with V4.2 projects, but I am keen to roll out V4.3 of EG and the SAS EBI clients once the install package is tested, and Base SAS is upgrade to TSM3 on our prod servers, etc (my to-do list has nested to-do lists!!).

[infotechmar]

What are the issues with Windows XP? I've tried lots of different ways to get EG to work efficiently but still have problems.

[ChrisHemedinger]

Re: issues with Windows XP

A few customers have noticed performance issues with the new program editor on Windows XP.

We've prepared some guidance to try here:
http://support.sas.com/documentation/onlinedoc/guide/blog/WPF_SASEG43.pdf