SAS VA and comments limitations

[Shawna]

Hello Everyone –

Currently evaluating different options for adding text commentary to a SAS Report in VA.  Had some questions about the limitations of the “Comments” section that I could not find the answer to in the administration guide:

1. Are comments backed up anywhere or are they directly tied to a SAS Report (2G) object?
2. Are there any limitations o
3. The number of comments that can be added to a report?
4. The duration of comments (weeks, years)?
5. File size of uploaded files to the comments?
6. Do you recommend any alternatives to embedding or linking dynamic commentary to SAS Reports?

Thank you very much for any information you can provide!  Many thanks in advance.

[DavidHenderson]

,  I can answer most of your questions immediately, but I need to do a little research on one of them...

1.  Comments are stored in a separate database, so they are not tied directly to the report.  The advantage is that a user doesn't need write permission on the report to add a comment about it.  Additionally, unless the user chooses to view the comments about a given report, he/she doesn't incur the overhead of fetching all of those comments.

2.  This question is pretty broad, so I am not sure of what you are wondering about.  One limitation is that because the comments are stored separately, they aren't included when the report is exported.  You also need to be careful when moving a report from folder to folder... if you make that move by copying, then deleting the original, you will probably lose the comments.

3.  There is no limit to the number of comments that can be added to a report.

4.  Comments don't have expiration dates, so they remain until someone does something to delete them.

5.  I don't know what the file size limit is... I'll check on this and get back to you.

6.  I don't have any other recommendations... It would be helpful if you explain what you are attempting to accomplish.

[DavidHenderson]

I checked on the limit on attachment file size.  As far as I can tell, there is no files size limitation. 

[Rama_s]

Hi Shawna,

I know this discussion is very old, but I found something which could help you or someone who has similar requirement.

If you look into postgres database there is a table called sas_comment which has comments from 2G reports.

The postgres applications are located at \\SAS\Applications\SASWebInfrastructurePlatformDataServer\9.4\bin

I found the this table using the database admin application pgAdmin3.exe.