Basic Questions about SAS VA ?

[anbudhan]

Hi , I am new the SAS world, can someone please help me with answers to these questions.

Much Appreciated

Can we use SAS VA as Standalone Application to build report or it works only with other SAS suite of products?
Does SAS VA Integrates with Office 365 application , in any form ?
Does SAS VA Integrates with Active Directory ?
Does SAS VA Loads data into report layer or pushes query down to SAS servers to compute?
If the reporting load is heavy how it balances the load? Can organisation scale out with SAS VA?
Does SAS VA use any MDX framework ?
Can we use multiple sources of data while building SAS VA report i.e. Data Blending or Mashing Engine .
Can we do Natural Language Processing with SAS VA?
Can we do Real time Streaming Reports with SAS VA
Can use R and Python languages in SAS VA
Can we do Text Analytics and other Advanced Analytics in SAS VA ?

[Anand_V · Accepted solution]

Hi @anbudhan 

I will try to answer few points I am aware of.

Can we use SAS VA as Standalone Application to build report or it works only with other SAS suite of products?

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Yes, you can use VA standalone as your reporting solution. It can also be integrated with other applications to leverage a common reporting tool.

Does SAS VA Integrates with Active Directory ?

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Yes, you can integrate VA with AD/LDAP.

Does SAS VA Loads data into report layer or pushes query down to SAS servers to compute?

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In SAS Multi-Tier Arch. all computation happens on the compute server.

If the reporting load is heavy how it balances the load? Can organisation scale out with SAS VA?

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SAS VA compute nodes can be scaled and computing can be distributed. Again depends on the architectural choice.

Can we use multiple sources of data while building SAS VA report i.e. Data Blending or Mashing Engine .
Can we do Natural Language Processing with SAS VA?
Can we do Real time Streaming Reports with SAS VA
Can use R and Python languages in SAS VA
Can we do Text Analytics and other Advanced Analytics in SAS VA ?

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VA is bare minimum product for reporting and visualization. It is bundled together with other products like Visual Statistics(VS), Visual Data Mining and Machine Learning (VDMML) to add advanced analytical capabilities to the platform.

Please visit the link for more insights on SAS® Visual Text Analytics 

[TonyAshley]

A bit more information relating to your questions - please feel free to contact me if you have any further questions:

Can we use SAS VA as Standalone Application to build report or it works only with other SAS suite of products?

SAS response - SAS Visual Analytics can be licenced as a stand alone product, providing you the ability to build reports, visualisations and dashboards etc, with no dependencies on any other SAS Viya products. 

Does SAS VA Integrates with Office 365 application , in any form ?

SAS response - Yes!  SAS Visual Analytics Add In for Microsoft Office provides a wide range on integration capabilities.  The following link provides access to a wide range of video tutorials that outline some of the rich functionality - https://video.sas.com/category/videos/sas-add-in-for-microsoft-office 

Does SAS VA Integrates with Active Directory ?

SAS response - Yes!  SAS Visual Analytics (and the underlying SAS Viya platform that Visual Analytics runs on) utilises a strict security and authorisation model.  The SAS Viya platform can support LDAP, Kerberos, OAuth/OpenID, SAML and multi factor authentication.

Does SAS VA Loads data into report layer or pushes query down to SAS servers to compute?

SAS response - It depends on how the reports are presented.  If the user is interacting with the report (changing date fields etc), then the data sets (tables) that is loaded into memory (CAS - the SAS servers) would be utilised.  More information on CAS processing is available here - https://go.documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=proc&docsetTarget=n1269xe46gjpojn1xpuftlndgovp.htm&docset...

If the reporting load is heavy how it balances the load? Can organisation scale out with SAS VA?

SAS response - Yes! One of the numerous benefits of the cloud native SAS Viya architecture is that containers can be seamlessly scaled (or reduced) to cope with increased or reduced demand.  Of course the ability to scale performance is strictly managed to ensure resources are allocated accordingly.

Does SAS VA use any MDX framework ?

SAS response - The latest release of SAS Viya 4 will have limited MDX support.  Further information is available here -https://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/support/en/sas-global-forum-proceedings/2020/4359-2020.pdf

Can we use multiple sources of data while building SAS VA report i.e. Data Blending or Mashing Engine .

SAS response - Yes!  Using SAS Visual Analytics its possible to connect to multiple data sources, create calculated values etc.  The following video provides some good information about connecting to multiple data sources within SAS Visual Analytics - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaeP3zxq02Q.

Can we do Natural Language Processing with SAS VA?

SAS response - Yes and no.  SAS Visual Analytics (and SAS Viya) uses natural language processing and other facets of Machine Learning to provide recommendations and explainability natively, but in order to unlock the full potential of natural language processing then the system should be licenced with SAS Visual Text Analytics that integrates with SAS Visual Analytics.  More information is available here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5hkMaTB28A and here - https://www.sas.com/en_gb/software/visual-text-analytics.html

Can we do Real time Streaming Reports with SAS VA

SAS response - Using SAS Event Stream Processing (ESP), its possible to analyse realtime data and present insight and findings within SAS Visual Analytics. 

Can use R and Python languages in SAS VA

SAS response - SAS provides a wide array of open source integration, allowing programmers and data scientists to code in languages they are comfortable and efficient with, whilst still providing governance and oversight.  Specifically with SAS Visual Analytics, coders can easily load data into the SAS Viya CAS system for further processing and analysis. The SAS platform can even leverage 3rd party open source visualisation technology.  Further information can be found here - https://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/support/en/sas-global-forum-proceedings/2019/3455-2019.pdf

Can we do Text Analytics and other Advanced Analytics in SAS VA ?

SAS response - SAS Visual Analytics is widely extensible and provides an intuitive and easy to use / navigate interface for many of the enhanced capabilities of the SAS Viya platform.  By licensing SAS Visual Statistics or Visual Data Mining and Machine Learning (VDMML), the amount of functionality available within the SAS Visual Analytics interface is increased.  Applying the licence for Visual Statistics unlocks the SAS/STAT procs and action sets for SPC and Variable reduce etc.  Applying the licence for  VDMML unlocks SAS/Text Analytics, SAS/IML, SAS/OR and other capabilities etc.