Sorry if this is a stupid question, but we've just installed a new environment including VA and I'm trying to get my head around it. I've searched documentation without success. I clearly need to get some training but in the meantime...!
Our environment consists of four servers: Metadata, Office Analytics, Visual Analytics and Middle Tier. SAS version is 9.4M5 and VA is 7.4, non-distributed. All four servers are Windows. We have a shed load of data on the OA server, migrated from our old environment. Most users currently use Enterprise Guide as their client software.
I am trying to work out how to load data from the OA server into VA, either using VA itself or with the EG "Upload to LASR" task. With the former, I can see the source tables in the metadata folders but when I try loading them I get an error that the source library isn't assigned (unsurprisingly I suppose). When I try using the EG task it informs me that it is unable to locate any LASR libraries. There are IOLA libraries defined in the metadata and I assumed that these would be available to load to but I'm clearly missing something.
I did watch part of a Youtube video from a couple of years ago, discussing how to do this, but it said that it only worked with a Linux VA server. I hope that's not still the case.
Many thanks for any insights.
@Nigel_Pain - Yes I think you are correct in that this only applies to Linux. In that case SAS/CONNECT can be used as an alternative. Do you have that installed and licensed - it would have to be on both your OA and VA servers?
The best way I know of handling this is to set up a SAS data library which is accessible and shared from both OA and VA.
You can set up a common LIBNAME that is defined the same on both OA and VA App servers and points to the same disk folder (for example (libname MyShrLib "\\MySASServer\MySharedFolder"). It is best practice to set up the data sources in SAS Management Console:
In Enterprise Guide I'm assuming that you would normally connect to your OA App server which is likely to be called something like SASApp. When creating a table to be loaded into VA, store it in the SAS library MyShrLib. In EG you can then disconnect from SASApp and then connect to your VA App server, maybe called something like SASAppVA. From here you will also have your MyShrLib library plus your LASR server libraries so you can now use the Load to LASR task.
Beginning with the third maintenance release for SAS® 9.4, SAS® Integration Technologies includes the SAS LASR Analytic Server Access Tools. The SAS LASR Analytic Server Access Tools include two engines: the SASIOLA engine and the SASHDAT engine. These engines make it possible to copy data from an environment without a SAS LASR Analytic Server to a remote SAS LASR Analytic Server or Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS).
@alexal - thanks for reminding me of that option which is better that having to jump between servers. We ourselves have been using SAS/CONNECT as we are still on 9.4M2.
@Nigel_Pain - Yes I think you are correct in that this only applies to Linux. In that case SAS/CONNECT can be used as an alternative. Do you have that installed and licensed - it would have to be on both your OA and VA servers?
@Nigel_Pain - That is great to hear. SAS/Connect is fantastic. Basically you SIGNON to a SAS VA server session from your SAS OA session and from there run some code to update the LASR data and SAS metadata (this is required for LASR). If you need some more guidance please ask.
Getting SAS/Connect configured correctly can be a bit tricky but hopefully your SAS administrators are across that.
We've got this sorted now, and it didn't involve SAS/Connect, so I thought it would be worth sharing. The answer was as simple as sharing the Windows folder where the OA data is stored, and using the UNC path in the metadata definition of the library, being careful, of course, to ensure that the share permissions and folder ACLs are set appropriately. The library can then be assigned to the VA context in the metadata as well as the OA one and that makes it possible to use the EG "Upload to LASR" task to load data to a LASR library.
I realise now that this was essentially the original advice from @SASKiwi but I think I misunderstood how to apply it the first time round.
Credits to John Curran from SAS Ireland, who helped with this.
@Nigel_Pain thanks for the mention. Yes using EG is great for loading LASR and I'm glad you found that solution.
However our use case is a bit different in that we do a lot of batch processing on our OA server which results in data which we then want to load straight into LASR all in one OA job. This is where SAS/CONNECT is the prefect solution for us as you can just SIGNON to SAS VA from OA at the end of your job and do the LASR loading.
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