Is SAS Viya a drop in replacement for SAS 9.4?

[thesasuser]

We have SAS Viya 3.5 on WIndows and SAS 9.4 on Windows.
Often I hear statements like "replacing SAS 9.4 with SAS Viya 3.5" and expecting the same experience as  on SAS 9.4.

I realise that SAS Viya 3.5 has substantially more features and capabilities than SAS 9.4 and one can always migrate from SAS 9.4 to SAS Viya 3.5 . Such migration does involve significant amount of effort. One may not have the same experience.
Architecturally they are different.
Wondering if I can say SAS Viya 3.5 may be a more capable product but not a drop in replacement for SAS 9.4.
I am not looking for feature comparison,

[sbxkoenk]

---

@thesasuser wrote:

... and expecting the same experience as  on SAS 9.4.

One may not have the same experience.

---

What do you mean with the term "experience"?

Migrating from SAS 9.3 to SAS 9.4 or migrating from SAS 9.4 M5 to SAS 9.4 M8 is indeed less "invasive" than migrating from SAS 9.x to VIYA 3.5 or to VIYA 4.

The architecture (and hence the SAS Administration) is different indeed, but for the end-user ... mainly ... the interface is different.

If you work mainly with code though, it's not too bad.
You can apply a "lift-and-shift" - approach and all code will also run in VIYA (on the SPRE / compute server admittedly ... to take full advantage of the new CAS engine, you need to re-factor the code).

If you're working with Enterprise Guide or Data Integration Studio, it's a bit more difficult. The replacement for Enterprise Guide is SAS Studio Flows and the replacement for DI Studio is SAS Studio Engineer (but both exist only in VIYA 4). If you are using Enterprise Guide 8.3 or higher, you can still work with VIYA 3.5, though (using EGuide as your interface to SAS VIYA 3.5).

VIYA is also zero-footprint software (fully browser-based). That sometimes does mean that it is not as flashy and instantaneous as SAS 9.4 thin clients (Enterprise Guide, Enterprise Miner, SAS 9.4 app on desktop). The browser sometimes responds slower (to point-and-click actions with the mouse) than an application running locally on your laptop or desktop.
But on the other hand, you can make very significant time gains when running programmes (especially if you leverage the CAS engine).

In fact, I see no reason (or very little reason) for SAS 9.4 and SAS VIYA to coexist.  You can perfectly replace one with the other. Unless perhaps you use certain specialized solutions (because not all solutions have a VIYA successor yet).

Perhaps you should explain how you are using SAS 9.4. Then we can better point the way forward.

BR,
Koen

[sbxkoenk]

Hello,

I see now you are using SAS® Viya® 3.5 for Windows.
SAS Viya 3.5 for Microsoft Windows supports single-machine deployments only.

I have no experience with SAS VIYA 3.5 for Windows or with VIYA 4 containerized (Docker) and running on the desktop.

My explanation above was written with cloud-based VIYA in mind (could also be private cloud).

BR,

Koen

[SASKiwi · Accepted solution]

It's my understanding that Viya 3.5 goes onto limited support in 2025, less than 18 months away. Personally I wouldn't be making any significant investments on that platform as a result. If you are looking at Viya, then it should be Viya 4, which only runs on Linux in Kubernetes containers. Moving from your current Windows SAS platform to a containerised Linux SAS platform brings its own headaches so is definitely not a "drop-in" solution.

[thesasuser]

I found this definition on Wikipedia(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop-in_replacement ) about drop in replacement
"Drop-in replacement is a term used in computer science and other fields. It refers to the ability to replace one hardware or software component with another one without any other code or configuration changes being required and resulting in no negative impacts."
While one may be able to do more and possibly better with SAS Viya , continue to use old code with necessary/essential  changes,  in my experience  it is not a drop in replacement. Programmers do have some changes , but for SAS 9.4 Administrators it requires substantial learning and facing challenges.

[SASKiwi]

@thesasuser - Thanks for the "drop-in" replacement definition as I was not entirely clear what you meant here. BTW, if your SAS 9.4 is not on maintenance M8, then I would regard an upgrade to M8 on your Windows platform as a drop-in replacement. It will also give you another 5 years full support unlike Viya 3.5.