Visual Analytics Sandbox

[jrothermel]

 We would like to be able to run a sandbox or parallel instance of VA so that we can test reports before rolling out to users. Does VA have a sandbox mode? If not how do people handle updating datasets without "breaking" an exisiting report?

[SASKiwi · Accepted solution]

SAS VA doesn't have a special sandbox mode. A SAS VA installation is the same regardless of whether you use it for development work, production work or both together.

If you did want to fully separate your production VA environment from your development VA one you would need to do this in your VA architectural design prior to installation. A typical approach would be to have two separate VA application servers. This would obviously come at a significant hardware and software cost.

If you have only one VA application server then you could consider running two LASR servers on the same physical server, one for production and the other for development. You would have to carefully set memory limits so one didn't adversely affect the other.

Reports are stored in SAS metadata folders so you could have separate folders for production and development work. Moving the reports between the folders would have to be managed manually. VA doesn't currently contain functionality for change control.