Will Visual Programming/Process Flows ever return to SAS Viya?

[illmatic]

in SAS 3.5, process flows and visual programming were removed. This was a big selling point for many people in my organization.

Will this feature be returning in the next version? 

What was the thought process in having it removed?

Thanks.

[SASKiwi · Accepted solution]

Flows are available in SAS Viya 4 in SAS Studio 

[illmatic]

Hi @SASKiwi 

I was told by my SAS Admin that since Viya 4 runs of a different architecture, it is not supported by an environment with 3.5 already deployed.

Any other ways to get visual programmer back? Pure-code in Studio 5.2 is a nightmare.

[SASKiwi]

@illmatic  - I understand Viya 3.5 supports SAS Enterprise Guide which has EG projects containing a visual programming palette with process flows. Viya 4 doesn't support EG but you can export EG projects to SAS Studio process flows. EG is a PC app so requires a PC install.

You can check out more details here: https://documentation.sas.com/doc/en/egcdc/8.3/egdoccdc/egug/p13s5c5jc3zgo3n18q122ixerw9v.htm

[illmatic]

Thanks for responding. It does not need to work with enterprise guide. I'm just looking for a way to use Visual Programming in SAS Viya.

Our SAS account administrator says there is no way since we are on 3.5

We cannot upgrade, we cannot downgrade, etc. 

Do you know if that means my business is stuck to use code-only? We are getting rid of enterprise guide and base SAS soon.

[Tom]

I would recommend that you talk to your IT department and explain that it will be a major disruption of your productivity to be forced to migrate from Enterprise Guide to VIYA 3.5 instead of the current version that will support the development method the users are used to.  Why would you migrate to an outdated version anyway?  You will just have to "pay the piper" later when 3.5 is too old to be useful any more.

[illmatic]

Thanks Tom. Viya 3.5 was what was sold to us. They led us to believe that 3.5 as feature equivalent to EG.

We were duped, but we're stuck in a 3-year contract with apparently no way to upgrade until 2025.

[SASKiwi]

@illmatic  - I don't understand your response. SAS EG 8.2 or higher works with SAS Viya 3.5, but not Viya 4, and contains a visual programming interface  - I thought that was exactly what you wanted. This link explains how this works. You need at least EG 8.2 so you can connect directly to a SAS Workspace Server which includes Viya 3.5.

[illmatic]

@SASKiwi 

Doesn't that require us to pay for two licenses then? We're on EG 7.1 and we're leaving local installed applications in favor of Cloud based solutions with a web interface.

I'm not sure how EG solves our issue, rather, another workaround.

If we can convince our account manager to allow us to upgrade to 8.2, theoretically we should be able to connect to our SAS server is what you are saying? We did ask this in a call with SAS and they said, no, that's not possible. Were they wrong?

I used what you reference in the link before, but we managed our own SAs Environment and was able to connect through there. We were told since SAS Cloud is hosting us, we cannot connect from EG.

[SASKiwi]

@illmatic  - I'm just going by what the documentation says - EG 8.2 or later works with Viya 3.x (I've tried the direct Workspace Server connection Viya requires myself with SAS 9.4 and it works well). It's not a workaround, but a supported option. The SAS people you talked to may have got it wrong. On the other hand it is possible that cloud-based Viya 3.5 adds extra limitations I'm not aware of and it only works for on-premise installations. You could ask for a second opinion from SAS Tech Support. They should be able to provide a definitive answer.

Assuming it is possible then there could be licensing implications which you need to discuss with your SAS account manager. You could argue that the lack of a visual programming interface is a good reason for SAS to give you a good deal...