Migrating content in SAS Viya can be straightforward when resources are stored in folders—you simply use SAS Environment Manager or the transfer plugin of the command-line interface (CLI). However, not all resources live in folders. Job flows, along with many of their dependent resources, are managed in the Jobs and Flows area of SAS Environment Manager and are not stored in folders. This makes their migration more complex, requiring the use of the sas-viya CLI (or sas-admin CLI for Viya 3 environments) and requiring the user to understand and navigate the dependent resources that comprise a flow.   In this post, we revisit the topic of job flow migration—originally covered for SAS Viya 3—and extend it to both Viya 3 and Viya 4. More importantly, we introduce a new Python-based tool (exportjobflow.py that automates the manual steps, making job flow migration faster, more reliable, and less error-prone.   A SAS Viya job flow, created and managed in the Jobs and Flows page of SAS Environment Manager, is a structured sequence of jobs that execute in a defined order, often with dependencies and conditional logic. It organizes multiple individual jobs into a workflow, ensuring tasks run in the correct sequence and handling dependencies or branching logic based on the success or failure of each task. Job flows are managed through SAS Viya’s Job Execution Service. They can be triggered manually or scheduled to run at specific times, making them ideal for automating recurring processes.     Select any image to see a larger version. Mobile users: To view the images, select the "Full" version at the bottom of the page.   A job flow consists of many dependent resources. When migrating a job flow, you must migrate the flow and all its dependent resources.   These resources include:   job flows (/jobFlowScheduling/flows): a flow can contain other job flows job actions (/jobFlowScheduling/jobs): a job action is a node in a job flow. They are created when you add a job request to a flow. job requests ( /jobExecution/jobRequests): job requests add runtime information to a job definition. The job request either includes the job definition to be executed or includes a link (via its URI) to the job definition job definitions (/jobDefinitions/definitions): contain metadata about a job, including the code, the type of job, and any parameters   Of these resources, only job definitions can be stored in folders. Although there are cases where job definitions are created but are not surfaced in folders.   A key step in exporting is to find the URI of the resources we wish to export. In SAS Viya, a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is used to identify unique resources. There are different types of URIs. For migration, we need to be aware of Content URIs. The format of the URI is service name, followed by endpoint and then a unique ID.​ ​Here, we see an example of three URIs: a folder, a report, and a job flow.   URI and IDS (the last part of the URI) are important for content migration because the export command of the transfer plugin uses the URI to identify what to export. The URI can be passed on the command line, or you can pass a list of URIs in a JSON request file.​ To export a Job flow, we need to create a JSON request file that contains a list of all the URIs for the resources that comprise the flow (other flows, actions, definitions, requests, etc.). The out-of-the-box process for doing this is manual, where we use the CLI to determine the URI of all related sources and manually build a request JSON file. In the section "Export a flow manually" below, I cover this process. In the next section, I introduce a new tool, exportjobflow.py, that simplifies and automates the process.     Exportjobflow.py   The pyviyatools is a collection of Python-based command-line utilities developed by SAS to help administrators and developers interact with SAS Viya environments. These tools utilize the SAS Viya REST APIs to automate common administrative tasks, facilitating easier management and migration of Viya resources. The tools are available from the SAS GitHub repository. A new tool exportjobflow.py automates the export of one or many SAS Viya Job flows. The tool:   Navigates the dependencies of the Job flows. builds a JSON request file for each flow. Exports each flow to a SAS Viya package.   The tool accepts either a unique flow name or a JSON file with a list of flows. It then loops through the flows and exports each one to a SAS Viya package. The JSON file can be easily created using the jobs plugin of the sas-viya CLI. In the first example, we will export a single flow, the same flow used in the manual process documented below. The flow can be exported with one command.   python exportjobflow.py -fn HRAnalysysProject_Job_Flow_001 -d /tmp/viyapackages -t --debug   The tool:   builds a JSON request file for the flow and its dependent resources creates a SAS Viya transfer package based on the content of the JSON request file   The output from the command displays the content of the JSON request file that is built. These are the resources that make up the SAS Job flow. The Viya package is created with the same name as the Job flow in the directory specified.   { "version": 1, "name": "HRAnalysysProject_Job_Flow_001", "description": "Created from pyviyatools flow name is:HRAnalysysProject_Job_Flow_001", "items": [ "/jobFlowScheduling/flows/672ecd0c-d967-4650-83c4-d975d66fe1ad", "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/836b3fd7-820b-4761-b15d-1b4dc7ffa7b4", "/jobExecution/jobRequests/b8160013-e27f-4295-8fc3-68ad5a379ef1", "/jobDefinitions/definitions/9edb4f3b-09e6-4242-9354-31716d27c89c", "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/ec467035-4e23-4fef-8ea1-3fc5f592782b", "/jobExecution/jobRequests/5238efec-8288-4ce6-a2c9-c90da11cfcab", "/jobDefinitions/definitions/e999e40a-1a44-453b-ab67-4ce38325d0ce", "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/311caef0-ecb4-4572-8a85-5e91984ce0f2", "/jobExecution/jobRequests/7af85970-bea3-4348-9fac-4110271e02c9", "/jobDefinitions/definitions/8f31b9df-959a-4937-ba37-8c4f1a8fe77a", "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/54efb035-5baa-4f8c-9e3d-11821bc7ef41", "/jobExecution/jobRequests/08d82c49-98d3-4b70-83ab-7c38c9d466f7", "/jobDefinitions/definitions/396cfff1-a97c-4c57-b91c-4eb720679181" ] } NOTE: Viya Job Flow and dependent objects HRAnalysysProject_Job_Flow_001 exported to json file /tmp/viyapackages/HRAnalysysProject_Job_Flow_001.json   To export a series of flows, use the sas-viya jobs plugin to create a list of Job flows in JSON  format.   sas-viya --output json job flows list --filter 'startsWith(name,"HR")' > /tmp/HRjoblist.json   The list of jobs is output to a JSON file.   { "items": [ { "description": "HR Analysis Job FLow", "id": "672ecd0c-d967-4650-83c4-d975d66fe1ad", "name": "HRAnalysysProject_Job_Flow_001", "version": 1 }, { "description": "Analyze employee survey data", "id": "6b7fb10d-360b-4ddf-9d82-1ab03e0b798d", "name": "HREmployeeSatisfactionFlow", "version": 1 } ] }   NOTE: When passing a file with a list of flows, you must use the --output JSON option on the CLI command.   Pass the JSON file containing the list of flows to  exportjobflow.py to export each flow to a package file.   python exportjobflow.py -ff /tmp/HRjoblist.json -d /tmp/viyapackages -t --debug   The output will show the number of flows processed.   ....... "/jobExecution/jobRequests/36228cbc-9194-40ae-a990-0ec4a375c11d", "/jobDefinitions/definitions/f93627e5-0fcf-4177-9f27-feeb7e33d40f" ] } NOTE: Viya Job Flow HREmployeeSatisfactionFlow and dependent objects exported to json file /tmp/viyapackages/HREmployeeSatisfactionFlow.json NOTE : total processed flows = 2   The tool will work in Viya and Viya 4. One caveat: if your Job flow contains a sub-flow. The sub-flow must be imported prior to importing the parent flow.   Read on to see the manual process of exporting a job flow.     Export a flow manually   To export the flow and all its dependent resources, you need to create a request file that contains all the resources the flow requires.  The request file includes a list of the Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) of the resources to export.  For Job flows this involves using the job plugin of the sas-viya CLI to find the URIs and then add them to the request file.     Get the flow URI   Firstly, let's get the URI of the flow itself. Use the flow command of the job plugin of the CLI to list flows. Pass a filter that makes sense for your environment based on the flow name.   sas-viya -output text job flows list -filter 'startsWith(name,"HRAn")'   Id Name Version Description 672ecd0c-d967-4650-83c4-d975d66fe1ad HRAnalysysProject_Job_Flow_001 1 HR Analysis Job FLow   You can also get the ID from the SAS Environment Manager Job and Flows page and by editing the flow.     Using the ID, we can retrieve the flow’s URI along with detailed information about the flow, including its associated resources. The flow URI starts with /jobFlowScheduling/flows.   sas-viya -output json job flows show --id 672ecd0c-d967-4650-83c4-d975d66fe1ad   The output shows all the properties of the flow. In the "self" entry in the links section of the output, the full URI of the flow is listed. It is /jobFlowScheduling/flows/672ecd0c-d967-4650-83c4-d975d66fe1ad   "links": [ { "href": "/jobFlowScheduling/flows/672ecd0c-d967-4650-83c4-d975d66fe1ad", "method": "GET", "rel": "self", "type": "", "uri": "/jobFlowScheduling/flows/672ecd0c-d967-4650-83c4-d975d66fe1ad" },   Create a JSON request file and add this URI. The rest of the process will add other required URIs to the requests file.   { "version": 1, "name": "HRAnalysysProject_Job_Flow_001", "description": "Building a request file for transfer", "items": [ "/jobFlowScheduling/flows/672ecd0c-d967-4650-83c4-d975d66fe1ad" }     Get Job Actions   To continue building the request JSON file, navigate through the dependent resources of the flow. A flow contains a set of job resources in the jobs list. The list can contain sub-flows, as well as job actions. The command below shows the details of the flows.   sas-viya -output json job flows show --id 672ecd0c-d967-4650-83c4-d975d66fe1ad   The output shows all the properties of the flow. The links output is removed for clarity.   { "createdBy": "geladm", "creationTimestamp": "2025-12-12T17:44:00.816Z", "defaultJobProperties": {}, "dependencies": [ { "event": { "condition": "all", "events": [ { "expression": "success('3_LoadFormatsInSAS')", "type": "jobevent" }, { "expression": "success('2_CreateDataInSAS')", "type": "jobevent" } ], "type": "gate" }, "target": "4_LoadDataInCAS" }, { "event": { "expression": "success('1_CreateFormatsInSAS')", "type": "jobevent" }, "target": "2_CreateDataInSAS" }, { "event": { "expression": "success('1_CreateFormatsInSAS')", "type": "jobevent" }, "target": "3_LoadFormatsInSAS" } ], "description": "HR Analysis Job FLow", "flowProperties": { "completionLevel": "default", "endBehavior": "stop", "exitcodeStrategy": "last" }, "id": "672ecd0c-d967-4650-83c4-d975d66fe1ad", "jobs": [ "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/836b3fd7-820b-4761-b15d-1b4dc7ffa7b4", "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/ec467035-4e23-4fef-8ea1-3fc5f592782b", "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/311caef0-ecb4-4572-8a85-5e91984ce0f2", "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/54efb035-5baa-4f8c-9e3d-11821bc7ef41" ], "modifiedBy": "geladm", "modifiedTimestamp": "2025-12-12T17:44:00.830Z", "name": "HRAnalysysProject_Job_Flow_001", "schedulerId": "166ed8bc-4ea9-407a-b7e6-b22dfb516720", "triggerCondition": "any", "triggerType": "event", "triggers": [ { "active": true, "event": { "duration": 100, "hours": "08", "maxOccurrence": 3, "minutes": "15", "name": "Runs every day effective 11/26/25 at 08:15(America/New_York)", "recurrence": { "dayOfMonth": 0, "skipCount": 1, "startDate": "2025-11-26", "type": "daily" }, "timeZone": "America/New_York" }, "name": "Runs every day effective 11/26/25 at 08:15(America/New_York)", "type": "timeevent" } ], "version": 1 } The command below passes the output to a JQ query to return just the list of job action resources.   sas-admin -output json job flows show --id 672ecd0c-d967-4650-83c4-d975d66fe1ad | jq '.jobs'   Expected output:   [ "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/836b3fd7-820b-4761-b15d-1b4dc7ffa7b4", "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/ec467035-4e23-4fef-8ea1-3fc5f592782b", "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/311caef0-ecb4-4572-8a85-5e91984ce0f2", "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/54efb035-5baa-4f8c-9e3d-11821bc7ef41" ]   NOTE: The jobs list can contain flows that are also members of this flow. If it does, you will need to follow this process to migrate that flow as well.   The four items in the jobs list should be added to the requests file. From the output of the jobs list, the URI starts with /jobFlowScheduling/jobs/. This indicates that the flow includes 4 job actions.     Get the Job Request and Job Definition   The job action can be linked to a Job request and/or Job definition.  If these exist, we must retrieve them and add them to the requests JSON file. This process must be repeated for each job action.   Firstly, use the actions command of the job plugin to get the URI of the jobRequest for the action.   sas-viya -output json job actions show --id 836b3fd7-820b-4761-b15d-1b4dc7ffa7b4   Expected output(partial):   { "createdBy": "geladm", "creationTimestamp": "2025-12-12T17:44:00.490Z", "id": "836b3fd7-820b-4761-b15d-1b4dc7ffa7b4", "jobRequestUri": "/jobExecution/jobRequests/b8160013-e27f-4295-8fc3-68ad5a379ef1", "links": [ ... ] } ], "modifiedBy": "geladm", "modifiedTimestamp": "2025-12-12T17:44:00.490Z", "name": "1_CreateFormatsInSAS", "priority": "none", "version": 1 }   You can use a jq query to just return the job request URI.   sas-admin -output json job actions show --id 836b3fd7-820b-4761-b15d-1b4dc7ffa7b4 | jq '.jobRequestUri'   For each job request there will be a job Definition. Use the definitions command of the job plugin to return the job definition URI and add it to the JSON request file.   sas-viya -output json job requests show --id b8160013-e27f-4295-8fc3-68ad5a379ef1   Expected output(partial):   { "arguments": { "_ODSOPTIONS": "OPTIONS(BITMAP_MODE='INLINE' SVG_MODE='INLINE' CSS_PREFIX='.ods_d2b292b3-ec7a-45ad-bea2-81d01c0e71b4' BODY_ID='div_d2b292b3-ec7a-45ad-bea2-81d01c0e71b4')", "_URL": "", "_addJesBeginEndMacros": "true", "_contextName": "SAS Studio compute context" }, "createdBy": "geladm", "creationTimestamp": "2025-12-12T17:44:00.163Z", "expiresAfter": "PT96H", "id": "b8160013-e27f-4295-8fc3-68ad5a379ef1", "jobDefinitionUri": "/jobDefinitions/definitions/9edb4f3b-09e6-4242-9354-31716d27c89c", "modifiedBy": "geladm", "modifiedTimestamp": "2025-12-12T17:44:00.164Z", "name": "1_CreateFormatsInSAS", "version": 3 }   You can use a jq query to just return the job request URI.   sas-admin -output json job requests show --id b8160013-e27f-4295-8fc3-68ad5a379ef1 | jq '.jobDefinitionUri'   "/jobDefinitions/definitions/9edb4f3b-09e6-4242-9354-31716d27c89c"   Repeat the process of returning the Job request URI and Job definition URI for each job action.     Export Job Flow and its Components   Here is the request file that would be built by this process. Now we will use the requests file to export the Job flow.   tee /tmp/request_jobflow.json > /dev/null <<EOF { "version": 1, "name": "HRAnalysysProject_Job_Flow_001", "description": "Request to export flow name :HRAnalysysProject_Job_Flow_001", "items": [ "/jobFlowScheduling/flows/672ecd0c-d967-4650-83c4-d975d66fe1ad", "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/836b3fd7-820b-4761-b15d-1b4dc7ffa7b4", "/jobExecution/jobRequests/b8160013-e27f-4295-8fc3-68ad5a379ef1", "/jobDefinitions/definitions/9edb4f3b-09e6-4242-9354-31716d27c89c", "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/ec467035-4e23-4fef-8ea1-3fc5f592782b", "/jobExecution/jobRequests/5238efec-8288-4ce6-a2c9-c90da11cfcab", "/jobDefinitions/definitions/e999e40a-1a44-453b-ab67-4ce38325d0ce", "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/311caef0-ecb4-4572-8a85-5e91984ce0f2", "/jobExecution/jobRequests/7af85970-bea3-4348-9fac-4110271e02c9", "/jobDefinitions/definitions/8f31b9df-959a-4937-ba37-8c4f1a8fe77a", "/jobFlowScheduling/jobs/54efb035-5baa-4f8c-9e3d-11821bc7ef41", "/jobExecution/jobRequests/08d82c49-98d3-4b70-83ab-7c38c9d466f7", "/jobDefinitions/definitions/396cfff1-a97c-4c57-b91c-4eb720679181" ] } EOF   Now you can use the sas-viya transfer export command with the --request parameter to create an export package containing the objects defined in `/tmp/request_jobflow.json`.   sas-viya --output text transfer export --request @/tmp/request_jobflow.json   Store the package ID in a variable and download the package file.   packageid=$(sas-viya --output json transfer list --name HRAnalysysProject_Job_Flow_001 | jq | jq -r '.items[]["id"]') sas-viya transfer download --file /tmp/viyapackages/jobflow.json --id $packageid     Importing   In your target environment, importing the packages can be done with SAS Environment Manager or the sas-viya CLI. Pyviyatools also has a tool importpackages.py that loops through a set of packages in a directory and imports them.     Wrap Up   Migrating SAS Viya job flows requires careful handling of multiple dependent resources, including flows, job actions, job requests, and job definitions. While the manual process involves identifying URIs for each component and building a JSON request file, the new exportjobflow.py tool from the PyViyaTools collection significantly streamlines this task. Automating dependency discovery and package creation reduces complexity and saves time, whether you are migrating a single flow or multiple flows. This approach ensures a more efficient and reliable migration process across SAS Viya 3 and Viya 4 environments.     Supplemental Resources   Here are some additional resources related to jobs and flows, as well as migration from Viya 3 to Viya 4.   Jobs and Flows official Documentation SAS Viya Platform: Jobs and Flows Jobs and Flows: Concepts Schedule Job Flows Jobs and Flows Tutorials & Blog Posts Getting Started with Job Scheduling in SAS Viya Tips for Scheduling Flows with SAS Viya Environment Manager Jobs and Flows Training Working with SAS® Viya® Jobs Working with SAS Viya Jobs: Advanced Scheduling and Orchestrating SAS® Programs and SAS® Studio Flows with SAS® Environment Manager Jobs and Flows Managing and Querying Data Using Flows in SAS Studio Using SAS® Studio Flows and Custom Steps in SAS® Viya® Fast Track Migration System Migration and Content Migration – SAS Help Center Migration on the SAS Viya Platform: Reference SAS Viya 3 Content Assessment SAS Viya Job object model Selective Backup and Restore of Viya Content pyviyatools You CAN take it with you! Saving SAS Viya Content     Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here. ... View more

SAS 9 Content Assessment has long been a valuable tool to help in the migration journey from SAS 9.4 to SAS Viya. Now available, the SAS Viya 3 Content Assessment is designed to help organizations evaluate and prepare their SAS Viya 3.5 environment for migration to SAS Viya 4.   There are currently two applications available in SAS Viya 3 Content Assessment: Inventory and System Evaluation. In a previous post, I covered System Evaluation. SAS Viya 3.5 Inventory has been available for some time; recently, it underwent an update to enhance its functionality. In this post, we will delve into the details of SAS Viya 3.x Inventory.     SAS Viya 3 Content Assessment   There are two approaches to migrating from SAS Viya 3 to SAS Viya 4: system migration, which migrates a whole SAS Viya 3 environment to SAS Viya 4, and content migration, which exports and imports specific content between a SAS Viya 3 and a SAS Viya 4 environment. Regardless of which approach you choose, Content Assessment is a key application that provides detailed information to plan the migration.   SAS Viya 3 Content Assessment uses an Ansible playbook to evaluate your SAS system, inventory your SAS content, and optionally backup your SAS Viya 3 environment. If you choose to perform a system migration you will also use the playbook to package your SAS Viya 3 system.   The Plan and Backup Ansible playbook is delivered by the inventory plugin of the sas-admin CLI. The inventory plug-in generates the playbook, which can be used to evaluate, inventory and backup a SAS Viya 3 environment. Let’s look at the process for performing inventory, and then we will explore how to interpret and use the results.     Running SAS Viya 3 Inventory   To get started, as the same user who will run the Plan and Backup Ansible playbook, download the latest sas-admin CLI from support.sas.com. You must also download the most recent version of the inventory, CAS, and backup plug-ins. The plugins are installed or updated using the sas-admin plugins command. The minimum version of the plugins required at the time of writing are:   inventory 1.10.20 or higher cas 1.12.10 or higher backup 1.6.3 or higher   The command below generates the playbook and supporting files and stores them in the /tmp/inventory-playbook directory.   ./sas-admin inventory generate-playbook --output-location /tmp/inventory-playbook   Directory contents:     Select any image to see a larger version. Mobile users: To view the images, select the "Full" version at the bottom of the page.   To run the playbook, you should use the inventory.ini file that was used to deploy the SAS Viya 3.5 environment. The inventory.ini file defines the inventory of machines (hosts) and their roles in the Viya 3.5 deployment. The inventory.ini file will most likely be in your Viya 3.5 project directory. To use the playbook, copy the files from the temporary directory into the Viya 3.5 project directory.   Prior to running the playbook, you need to do a little configuration. Firstly, provide the credentials of a member if the SAS Administrators group in the viya_credentials.txt file.   Secondly, set the variables in viya_plan_backup_vars.yaml file. Some of the key variables in the vars file are shown below:   endpointServer: which is the URL of the SAS Viya 3 server inventoryResultsLocation: the location to store the inventory results files evaluationResultsLocation: the location to store the evaluation results files reportCASServer : the CAS server where the result data will be loaded SAS_BACKUP_ID: an ID for the SAS Viya 3.x migration package (must be unique for each run) migrationPackageLocation: the storage location for the SAS Viya 3.x migration package.   The recent update introduced some new settings which are worth mentioning:   sasExecutionHost is the bost where the SAS Programming run time is located. COLLECT_PARENT_FOLDER: tells the playbook to collect the parent folder for all objects stored in SAS Viya folders. The default is false because this function is processing intensive. It is very useful, though so if you are happy to wait for results you can change it to true.. prepareUploads: can be set to true to prepare your data for sharing with SAS. This enables the creation and archiving of encrypted published results. uploadsLocation: specifies the directory used to store results intended to be shared with SAS.   All variables in the viya_plan_backup_vars.yaml file are well commented with the details of how to use them. To scan file locations other than the default file systems that SAS Viya 3 uses you can add paths to the PATHLISTFILE parameter file.   You run the playbook from the command-line. If no parameters are provided the playbook performs an inventory scan and a backup. It accepts two parameters (tags) that will change that behavior.   evaluate inventoryscan   It is a good practice to run a system evaluation first, followed by inventory. System evaluation provides the status of the environments eligibility to migrate to SAS Viya 4 using system migration. You can then run with a backup if you decide to proceed with the system migration. In a previous post I looked at the evaluation play and how it identifies if the SAS Viya 3.5 environment meets the baseline requirements for migration to SAS VIya.   To perform an inventory, change into the directory that contains your inventory.ini file and run the viya-plan-backup.yml playbook passing the tag inventoryscan.   cd sas_viya_playbook/ ansible-playbook viya-plan-backup.yml --tags 'inventoryscan'   The scan results are loaded to tables in the SystemData CAS library.   The inventory scan tasks also create a SAS Visual Analytics report in JSON format. Before using the report in SAS Environment Manager, you must import the JSON file using SAS Environment Manager.     SAS Viya 3 Content Assessment inventory: what can we learn?   The SAS Viya Inventory report is available at Products > SAS Environment Manager > Dashboard Items.   The Status tab gives an overview of the SAS artifacts processed by the inventory scan, categorizing the counts by service artifacts stored in the infrastructure data server, CAS artifacts stored in the CAS server and Filesystem artifacts stored on the file system.   The What’s Being Used tab provides an overview of the licensed Software by Portfolio and Sellable offering and counts the content item by selected Portfolio. This tab can help in planning what software needs to be licensed in SAS Viya 4.     The CAS Inventory tab documents CAS libraries and CAS tables providing counts and volume of data by various types of CAS library, allowing insights into data distribution and storage utilization.     The Filesystem Inventory tab helps understand SAS files in the filesystem and reveals how data is stored and utilized. Filtering by filesystem and extension allows you to explore usage by organization or file type.     The two tabs What's Being Accessed and What's Being Modified can work together to identify what file system resources are actively used in the environment.   On the What's Being Accessed files are classified as Hot, Warm, and Cold representing how recently files were used by a SAS program or application. The Last Accessed On date tells you the most recent time the file was opened, read, or otherwise used. It does not mean the content changed - just that someone looked at it or a system read it. Only files with last accessed date values are shown in the tables and filters. You can change thresholds to filter the files. This report can help you identify what files are being used and any that are not, so that you can prioritize the migration.     Similarly, the What's Being Modified classifies files as Hot, Warm, and Cold depending on how recently files were modified. The report is based on the last modified data of a file which identifies the last time the file was changed, including edited, updated, or overwritten. Again, this report can help you identify what files are being used and any that are not, so that you can prioritize the migration.   The Object Inventory tab provides an inventory of SAS Viya content created by users and SAS Viya services. The object inventory can help you identify the type and volume and location of content stored in the SAS infrastructure data server. You can switch between customer objects and Internal objects. The Parent Folder column will display folder information if the COLLECT_PARENT_FOLDER variable is set to true in viya_plan_backup_vars.yml     The Deployment Provisioning tab describes the environment, including CAS topology and layout, SAS Infrastructure Data Server size, and minimum resource requirements. This information allows you to plan the topology of your target CAS environment and estimate the resource requirements in terms of disk space and CPU for SAS Viya 4.     The CAS Backup Planning tab identifies critical CAS libraries and the volume of data in each library. It flags CAS library paths as NFS mounted or not. This can help you decide whether the data needs to be migrated to SAS Viya or whether SAS Viya can access the data from the NFS server.   A new tab Transfer Packages tab lists the transfer packages that are stored in the infrastructure data server. The tab supports exporting to a CSV file, and the CSV file can be used with the transfer plug-in on the SAS VIYA CLI to delete the packages.     SAS Viya 3 Content Assessment inventory: What do we do with what we learned?   So how do we use the information from the SAS Viya 3 Content Assessment.     Plan for the migration   From the Inventory report, we can learn about the types of content and configurations present in the SAS Viya 3 environment, the volume of each content type, the location of the content within metadata or the file system, and whether file system content has been recently updated or accessed. These insights from the inventory can be used to clean the environment before a migration, guide the next steps in the assessment process by identifying the most used content items, and plan for items that may not automatically migrate to SAS Viya.     Plan for Viya 4 licenses and architecture   The reports can help determine the appropriate mix of SAS Viya software that needs to be licensed to support the migration of Viya 3.5 content. In addition, the reports can help to plan the Viya 4 deployment to ensure the target environment has the necessary resources in terms of memory CPU and storage. Also ensure that there is enough room to store the backup package during the migration process.     Getting Help   The reports provide a lot of detailed information. If you need it, you can get help from SAS to understanding what your results mean. You can send your results from the inventory scan tasks and evaluate tasks to SAS. Sharing your results with SAS influences future migration development priority. When you publish your results, they are encrypted and protected with an encrypted key. The steps to share results with SAS are documented here.     Wrap Up   SAS Viya 3 Content Assessment includes Inventory and System Evaluation applications to support migration planning to SAS Viya 4. The inventory application uses an Ansible playbook, generated via the sas-admin CLI, to scan your Viya 3.x environment. It includes a report that offers detailed insights into system usage, data distribution, file activity, and resource requirements—helping prioritize and plan a smooth migration.     Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here. ... View more

In this continuation of posts about SAS 9 Content Assessment reports, we look at the SAS 9 Profile for SAS Enterprise Guide Migration report and review what information it provides, what conclusions can be drawn, and what likely actions you would take after reviewing it. As a reminder, this series of posts does not cover how to run SAS Content Assessment applications. Instead, it focuses on using the results. For information about running the SAS Content Assessment, check out his post and this demo.     SAS Content Assessment Profile Application   The SAS Content Assessment Profile application provides detailed information about the attributes of SAS 9 content. Profile delivers reports for each SAS 9.4 content type. The reports include details like:   Tasks used in SAS Enterprise Guide projects Transformations used in SAS Data Integration Studio projects Users, groups, and group memberships Encoding of SAS data   The profile application and the various reports help you to understand the details of SAS 9 content and how those details impact migration to SAS Viya.     SAS 9 Profile for Enterprise Guide Projects Migration   The SAS 9 Profile for SAS Enterprise Guide Migration report covers SAS Enterprise Guide projects.   SAS Enterprise Guide projects are made up of tasks (the nodes in the projects). Projects migrate to SAS Studio flows, which include steps (the nodes in the SAS Studio flows). Each process flow within a SAS Enterprise Guide project migrates to a SAS Studio flow.   Select any image to see a larger version. Mobile users: To view the images, select the "Full" version at the bottom of the page.     The migration process attempts to migrate a task to an equivalent step or steps in SAS Studio. If a task cannot be migrated to equivalent step(s), it is often migrated to a SAS Program step in SAS Studio that includes SAS code to perform the function of the task. A task might not migrate to an equivalent step because there is no matching step in SAS Studio. A good example of this would be “Update Library Metadata” because there is no metadata server in SAS Viya.   The SAS 9 Profile for SAS Enterprise Guide Migration report helps you to understand what will happen to SAS Enterprise Guide projects and their tasks during the migration process from SAS 9 to SAS Viya.     What can we learn?   The Overview tab in the report provides a summary of the status of all projects in the deployment. Currently, there are 23 projects in the deployment, with 18 of them being considered “migration candidates.” A migration candidate is a SAS project that is highly likely to succeed when migrating to SAS Viya. The number of migration candidates is determined by counting the SAS Enterprise Guide projects that contain only tasks that will migrate to SAS Viya. If all tasks will migrate, the project is a migration candidate (more details below).       The Profiled Project Details tab documents the projects' locations, SAS Enterprise Guide versions, and creation and update dates.       The Project Migration Concerns tab identifies project-level issues in the scanned projects. These projects will migrate; however, there are some items in a project that are either currently not converted to a corresponding feature or that might need manual intervention once migration is complete. A list of the type of project-level concerns that may be surfaced is provided.       Select the Project Item Migration Details tab to see the detailed analysis for each project and each task in a project. This tab helps you understand what will happen to the tasks within a project when the project migrates to a SAS Studio flow. The report classifies a task as Ideal Fit, Partial Fit, Code Fit, No Fit, or Undetermined Fit. A task is considered:   Ideal Fit: The task’s migration is automatic. All features or functionality used are maintained. Partial Fit: The task’s migration is automatic. All features or functionality used are maintained. After migration, an attribute might need to be set or a relationship to another object might need to be verified. Code Fit: The task’s migration is automatic. Most features or functionality used are maintained using code in a SAS Program step. No Fit: The task cannot be migrated, and there is no planned feature replacement for it in SAS Viya. Undetermined Fit: The task was unable to be profiled or evaluated for migration status.   Tasks within a project that are profiled will fall into one of the categories mentioned above.       The Project Item Migration Details tab allows you to explore the details about the task migration. It allows you to select an individual project and explore what will happen to the specific tasks in it. Let us look at the Financial Master project.   On the Project Item Migration Details tab, we have selected Financial_Master_v4 (the project shown in the image at the start of this post).  The project is a migration candidate because all tasks are either ideal fit, partial fit, or code fit. Notice that the status of each task is listed, and for those tasks that are not ideal fit, a reason is provided in the Conversion Message column.       The Project Item Conversion Messages tab gives us a task-based view.  The table on the left of the page shows the most frequently used SAS Enterprise Guide tasks in the SAS 9 environment and the steps that they become in SAS Viya. In this report, Query was the most used task. The table to the right shows the most common conversion messages for these tasks. Notice that the Query tasks will migrate to Query steps in SAS Studio in 28 cases, but there are five cases where the task will migrate to a SAS Program step, and the reason is provided in the conversion message in the table.       Another key piece of information from this tab is the SAS Studio licenses that are required for the equivalent steps in SAS Viya.   The Overall Project Migration tab is where we can take the next step in the migration journey. The projects listed on this tab can be downloaded to a CSV file that will drive the migration process. The CSV file is used as input to the SAS Content Assessment Import EG Projects application that imports SAS Enterprise Guide projects on the file system to the SAS Viya 4 platform. The application will iterate through the CSV file, importing each SAS Enterprise Guide project.       What do we do with what we learned?   The SAS 9 Profile for SAS Enterprise Guide Migration report offers a detailed analysis of our SAS Enterprise Guide projects, highlighting project characteristics, task usage, and migration readiness. What can we do with this information?   Identify Licenses Needed in SAS Viya   SAS Studio is currently available with three licenses: SAS Studio, SAS Studio Analyst, and SAS Studio Engineer. By documenting the license required for the tasks, the SAS 9 Profile for SAS Enterprise Guide Migration report identifies what level of SAS Studio is needed to run the resulting SAS Studio flows.   Prioritize Projects for Migration   Using the report, you can prioritize the migration of projects in the environment that are classified as migration candidates. These projects should migrate easily, with minimal adjustments, and take full advantage of equivalent steps in SAS Studio. Similarly, you can identify high-risk or complex projects that might require additional effort.   Remediate Partial Fit and Code Fit Tasks   The report identifies tasks in projects classified as Partial Fit. These tasks require targeted remediation. The report’s conversion messages help identify specific issues. Remediation can happen in the source environment or in SAS Viya after the migration.   Evaluate No Fit and Undetermined Fit Tasks   Tasks labeled as No Fit or Undetermined Fit might require a redesign or alternative implementation strategies in SAS Viya. These tasks should be reviewed to determine whether functionality can be replicated using supported features in SAS Viya or if custom development is needed.   Automate Project Import with CSV Integration   The Overall Project Migration tab allows the export of the project list to a CSV file. The CSV file is used as input to the import EG projects application. This enables the automated import of selected projects, streamlining the migration process and reducing manual effort. Projects can also be imported individually with SAS Viya Environment Manager and the transfer plug-in of the SAS Viya CLI.     Wrap Up   The SAS 9 Profile for SAS Enterprise Guide Migration report helps assess the migration status of SAS Enterprise Guide projects. It analyzes each project and its tasks, identifying whether the projects are candidates for migration to SAS Studio flows. The report classifies tasks into categories (Ideal Fit, Partial Fit, Code Fit, No Fit, or Undetermined Fit) and classifies projects as migration candidates or not. It highlights licensing needs for SAS Studio and supports migration planning by generating a list of projects ready for migration.   The report helps to plan and execute the migration of SAS Enterprise Guide projects to SAS Studio flows on SAS Viya. It helps identify the appropriate SAS Studio license needed based on task requirements, it prioritizes projects that are ready for migration, and it flags projects needing remediation or redesign. The information in the report can be used to identify the usage of projects, which can lead to cleaning up projects before migration.   Here are some related resources, including the other posts in this series:   Communities Post: SAS 9 Content Assessment: the Profile Report for SAS Data Integration Studio Jobs (Update) Blog: Have You Heard of the Picture Superiority Effect? If Not, You’re About To! Communities Post: SAS 9 Content Assessment: Code Check Communities Post: SAS 9 Content Assessment: Application Usage Communities Post: SAS 9 Content Assessment: Inventory Communities Post: SAS Content Assessment Proven Practice SAS Demo | Using the modifySASCode Content Assessment Application – YouTube Communities Post: Content Assessment: SAS 9 Code Check for Internationalization Class: Migrating SAS 9.4 Content to the SAS Viya Platform on learn.sas.com Content Assessment Download SAS 9.4 to Viya Content Migration Documentation SAS Demo  | SAS Content Assessment Overview Communities Post: Migrating from SAS 9 to Viya: what's the first step  Communities Post: Migration of Stored processes to SAS Viya Jobs Communities Post: Content Assessment delivers utility applications to support SAS Viya Content Migration Communities Post: Go with the flow; migrating Enterprise Guide Projects to SAS Studio Flows Communities Post: SAS Viya 2021.2 – Migrating SAS Data Integration (DI) Studio Jobs to SAS Studio Flows Communities Post: A first look at Migration from SAS 9.4 to Viya 4 SAS Demo | SAS Viya Migration of Enterprise Guide Project to SAS Studio Flows – YouTube SAS Demo | Migrating SAS Data Integration Studio Jobs to SAS Studio Flows     Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here. ... 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In this continuation of the series of posts on the SAS 9 Content Assessment reports, we look at the SAS 9 Profile for SAS Data Integration Jobs report and review what information it provides, what conclusions can be drawn from it, and what likely actions you would take after reviewing it.   As a reminder, this series of posts does not cover how to run SAS Content Assessment applications; instead, it focuses on using the results. For information about running the SAS Content Assessment, check out this post and this demo.     SAS Content Assessment Profile Application   The SAS Content Assessment Profile application provides detailed information on the attributes of SAS 9 content. Profile delivers a series of reports for each SAS 9.4 content type. The reports include details like:   Tasks used in Enterprise Guide projects Transformations used in Data Integration Studio Jobs SAS Code locations and use of prompts in Stored Processes Encoding of SAS Data   The Content Assessment Profile application and reports help you to understand the details of SAS 9 Content and how those details impact migration to SAS Viya.   The SAS Profile for Data Integration Jobs report is the main report covering SAS Data Integration Studio Jobs.   SAS 9 Data Integration Studio jobs consist of transformations (the nodes in the jobs). Jobs migrate to SAS Studio flows, which include steps (the nodes in the SAS Studio flows).   Select any image to see a larger version. Mobile users: To view the images, select the "Full" version at the bottom of the page.   The migration process will attempt to migrate a transformation to an equivalent step or steps in Studio. If a transformation cannot be migrated to equivalent step(s), it is often migrated to a SAS Studio Program step that includes SAS code to perform the function of the transformation. A transformation may be prevented from migrating to an equivalent step because there is no matching step in Studio, or some attribute of the transformation is not yet supported. The SAS 9 Profile for SAS Data Integration report helps you to understand what may happen to the SAS Data Integration Studio Jobs and their transformations during the migration process from SAS 9 to SAS Viya.     What can we learn?   The SAS Data Integration Studio report will analyze each SAS Data Integration Studio job and classify each job and each transformation within a job.   The Overview tab in the report summarizes the status of all the Jobs and Transformations in the deployment. In this deployment, there are 27 jobs with 53 Transformations. Of the 27 jobs, 24 are “Migration Candidates.” A migration candidate is a SAS object believed to have a high probability of success when migrating to SAS Viya. For SAS Jobs, there are varying degrees of success based on whether there is migration support for some or all of the transformations used in the job. The Overview tab also provides details of when Jobs and Transformations were created and last updated.     The Jobs tab provides details about the characteristics of the jobs in the environment, including:   transformations per job whether jobs have pre-code and post-code whether the jobs have been deployed for scheduling     The Transform Usage tab and the Jobs Using Transforms tab both focus on how many of each type of transformation is used and where they are used. The Transform Usage tab provides counts of the SAS Data Integration Studio transforms used in the jobs and whether those transformations have user-written code. Jobs Using Transforms lists the transformations for each job and whether they have user-written code.   The Data Usage tab documents the data used by the SAS Data Integration Jobs. Data is classified as:   Persisted Tables: library-based data sets that persist after the SAS session closes Transient Tables: tables that typically use the SAS Work library are deleted when the SAS session closes External Files: files that are read from the file system.   You can identify what tables are used in each job and whether they are source or target tables.     Transformation Migration Details is a key tab on the report. This page helps you understand what will happen to the transformations within a Job when the job migrates to a SAS Studio Flow. The report classifies transformation as Ideal Fit, Partial Code Fit, No Fit, or Undetermined Fit. A transformation is considered:   Ideal Fit: The migration of the transform is automatic. All features or functionality used are maintained. Partial Fit: The transform's migration is automatic. All features or functionality used are maintained. After migration, an attribute might need to be set, or a relationship to another object might need to be verified. Code Fit: The transform's migration is automatic. Most features or functionality are maintained using code in a Studio Program Step. No Fit: The transform cannot be migrated, and there is no planned feature replacement for it in SAS Viya. Undetermined Fit: if the transformation was unable to be profiled or evaluated for migration status.   Transformations within a Data Integration job that are profiled will fall into one of the categories mentioned above.     The Transformation Migration Details page allows you to explore the details of the transformation migration. It also allows you to select individual jobs and explore what will happen to the specific transformation in them. Let us look at a couple of jobs.   Ideal Fit Job: 01_Split_Finance_Data   On the Transformation Migration Details tab, we have selected 01_Split_Finance_Data (the job shown in the image at the start of this post). All of the transformations in the job migrate to an equivalent step in SAS Studio. The report shows the:   File Writer Transformations will migrate to an Export step in SAS Studio Extract Transformation will migrate to a Query step Splitter Transformation will migrate to a Branch Rows step.     This job is ready to migrate to SAS Viya and SAS. Studio.   Partial Fit: Supplier Load   On the Transformation Migration Details tab, we have selected Supplier Load. This job has two transformations one is ideal fit and one is partial fit. The partial fit transform is a SCD Type 2 loader in SAS Data Integration Studio. While it will migrate to an equivalent step in SAS Studio, as the conversion message indicates it may need some modifications to get it running.     Instead of approaching what will happen from the job perspective, Transform Migration Conversion Messages gives us a transformation-based view. The table on the left of the page shows the most frequently used SAS 9 transformations in the SAS 9 environment and the Steps they become in SAS Viya. In this report, the File Reader was the most frequently used transformation, and we can see that it will be migrated to a SAS Program Step. The table to the right shows the most common conversion method for these transformations.     Another key piece of information from this tab is the SAS Viya Studio licenses required for the equivalent steps in SAS Viya.   The Job Migration tab is where we can take the next step in the migration journey. Jobs are classified as migration candidates based on the percentage of transformations in the job that are an ideal fit.     The Job listing in this tab can be downloaded to a CSV file that will drive the migration process.   The CSV file is used as an input to the SAS Content Assessment CreateSASPackages application, which will automate the export of the SAS Data Integration Studio jobs that you select for migration. You can use the slider to investigate the impact of lowering the threshold for the "percentage of transforms with ideal fit". When you adjust the slider, Jobs higher than the ideal fit threshold are color-coded blue in the table listing. The buttons can be used to filter the jobs in the table, and the checkboxes can be used to select group(s) of jobs to export for package creation.       What do we do with what we learned?   The SAS 9 Profile for Data Integration report offers a detailed analysis of our SAS 9 Data Integration environment, highlighting job characteristics, transformation usage, and migration readiness. What can we do with this information?     Identify License Needed in SAS Viya   SAS Studio is currently available with three licenses. SAS Studio, SAS Studio Analyst, and SAS Studio Engineer. By documenting the license required for the transformations, the report will identify what level of SAS Studio is needed to run the resulting SAS Studio flows.     Prioritize Jobs for Migration   Using the report, you can prioritize the migration of jobs in the environment that are classified as migration candidates. These jobs should migrate easily, with minimal adjustments, and take full advantage of equivalent steps in SAS Studio. The reports also identify which jobs are being used and the frequency with which the jobs are changing. This information is used with other Content Assessment reporting and can help to develop a strategic plan for the migration of Data Integration jobs.     Remediate Partial Fit Transformations   The report identifies transformations within jobs classified as "Partial Fit." These transformations require targeted remediation. The report’s conversion messages help identify specific issues. Remediation can happen in the source environment or can be addressed in SAS Viya after the migration.     Evaluate No Fit and Undetermined Fit Transformations   Transformations labeled as No Fit or Undetermined Fit might require redesign or alternative implementation strategies in SAS Viya. These transformations should be reviewed to determine whether functionality can be replicated using supported features in SAS Viya or if custom development is needed.     Automate Job Export with CSV Integration   The Job Migration tab allows export of job listings to a CSV file. The CSV file is used as input to the createSASpackages application. This enables automated packaging of selected  SAS Data Integration Studio jobs, streamlining the migration process and reducing manual effort.     Identify Key Data and its Location   The Data Usage section of the Data Integration Studio report reveals which datasets are actively used across jobs, including persisted tables, transient (temporary) tables, and external files. This enables us to identify critical data assets for migration. We can plan for the migration of the data so that it is available in SAS Viya for the SAS Studio Flows that are created during the migration. The report can also be used to flag unused or redundant data for potential cleanup.     Wrap Up   The SAS 9 Profile for SAS Data Integration report helps assess the migration status of  SAS Data Integration Studio jobs. It analyzes each job and its transformations, identifying whether the jobs are candidates for migration to SAS Studio flows. The report classifies transformations into categories (Ideal Fit, Partial Fit, Code Fit, No Fit, or Undetermined Fit) and provides detailed insights about job characteristics, data usage, and transformation frequency. It highlights licensing needs for SAS Studio and supports migration planning by generating a list of jobs ready for migration.   The report helps to plan and execute the migration of SAS Data Integration Studio jobs to SAS Studio flows on SAS Viya. It helps identify the appropriate SAS Studio license needed based on transformation requirements, it prioritizes jobs that are ready for migration, and it flags jobs needing remediation or redesign. The information in the report can be used to identify the usage of jobs, which can lead to cleaning up jobs before a migration.   The report supports creating a CSV file of candidate jobs that can be used with the createSASpackages application.   Here are some related resources, including the other posts in this series:   BLOG: Have You Heard of the Picture Superiority Effect? If Not, You’re About To! Communities Post: SAS 9 Content Assessment: Code Check Communities Post: SAS 9 Content Assessment: Application Usage Communities Post: SAS 9 Content Assessment: Inventory Communities Post: SAS Content Assessment Proven Practice SAS Demo | Using the modifySASCode Content Assessment Application – YouTube Communities Post: Content Assessment: SAS 9 Code Check for Internationalization CLASS: Migrating SAS 9.4 Content to the SAS Viya Platform on learn.sas.com Content Assessment Download SAS 9.4 to Viya Content Migration Documentation SAS DEMO  | SAS Content Assessment Overview Communities Post: Migrating from SAS 9 to Viya: What's the first step Communities Post: Migration of Stored Processes to Jobs Communities Post: Content Assessment delivers utility applications to support SAS Viya Content Migration Communities Post: Go with the flow; migrating Enterprise Guide Projects to SAS Studio Flows Communities Post: SAS Viya 2021.2 – Migrating SAS Data Integration (DI) Studio Jobs to SAS Studio Flows Community Post: A first look at Migration from SAS 9.4 to Viya 4 SAS DEMO | SAS Viya Migration of Enterprise Guide Project to SAS Studio Flows – YouTube SAS DEMO | Migrating SAS Data Integration Studio Jobs to SAS Studio Flows     Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here. ... 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Recently, SAS introduced a new System Evaluation application for Viya 3.5 environments. This application enables organizations to assess the health of their systems and prepare for updates, upgrades and migrations to SAS Viya 4. In this post, we will look at how to install and use the application and what information the evaluation results provide.   System Evaluation is performed using the “Plan and Backup Ansible playbook.” This playbook is used in the planning stage of a migration to Viya 4 to scan and backup a Viya 3.5 deployment. The playbooks’ functionality has been enhanced to add evaluation capabilities.     Installation   The Plan and Backup Ansible playbook is delivered by the inventory plugin of the SAS-admin CLI. The inventory plug-in generates the playbook.   To get started, as the same user who will run the Plan and Backup Ansible playbook, download the latest sas-admin CLI from support.sas.com. You must also download the most recent version of the inventory, CAS, and backup plug-ins. The plugins are installed or updated using the sas-admin plugins command. The minimum version of the plugins required to perform the evaluation can change. At the time of writing, the minimum version is:   inventory 1.10.20 or higher cas 1.12.10 or higher backup 1.6.3 or higher   The command below will generate the playbook.   ./sas-admin inventory generate-playbook --output-location /tmp/inventory-playbook   To use the playbook, copy the files from the directory where it was created into the Viya 3.5 project directory. This is where the inventory.ini file and the install playbook files for the SAS Viya 3.5 environment are located.   To configure the scan and backup, set the variables in viya_plan_backup_vars.yaml. ​Some of the key variables in the vars file   endpointServer: which is the URL of the SAS Viya 3 server inventoryResultsLocation: the location to store the inventory results files evaluationResultsLocation: the location to store the evaluation results files reportCASServer : the CAS server where the result data will be loaded SAS_BACKUP_ID: an ID for the SAS Viya 3.x migration package (must be unique for each run) migrationPackageLocation: the storage location for the SAS Viya 3.x migration package.   All variables in the file are commented with the details of how to use them.​       Running the evaluate play​   To run the playbook, use the inventory.ini file that was used to deploy the SAS Viya 3.5 environment. The inventory.ini file defines the inventory of machines (hosts) and their roles in the Viya deployment. It tells Ansible which machines to configure and how to configure them. The playbook, by default, will perform both an inventory scan and backup if no parameters are provided. It accepts two parameters (tags) that will change that behavior:   evaluate inventoryscan   Each parameter is independent, it is recommended to run “evaluate” first. To run the play, change the directory to the directory that contains your inventory.ini file and run the viya-plan-backup.yml playbook passing the tag evaluate.   cd sas_viya_playbook/ ansible-playbook viya-plan-backup.yml --tags 'evaluate'     The playbook loads the data containing the evaluation results to the CAS server specified in the viya_plan_backup_vars.yaml file. The playbook also delivers the reports, and they can be imported to SAS Viya using the transfer plugin of the SAS Viya CLI or SAS Environment Manager.     System Evaluation Report   The SAS Viya 3.5 System Evaluation report contains four sections:   Migration Status System Status Installed Software About this Report   From a migration perspective, the most important section is Migration Status. This section assesses the eligibility of the Viya 3.5 environment for migration to SAS Viya 4. In the Migration Status section, the “Release Meets Migration Requirements” column is used to determine if you are eligible to migrate to SAS Viya 4. The report notes, “In order to use the full-system migration method to migrate to SAS Viya 4, your installation must be SAS Viya 3.5, released on October 29, 2024, or later.”  In our case, we can see that we are not eligible to migrate because the SPRE Build Date used to determine eligibility is 2019/11/06. The environment would need to be updated before it could be migrated to SAS Viya 4.     SAS recommends that you migrate to the latest SAS Viya 4 stable or LTS release.   If your environment is not eligible for migration, you will need to move to a release of Viya 3.5 released after October 29, 2024. If you are on a release prior to SAS Viya 3.5, you will need to follow the steps here to upgrade to the latest release. If you are on an earlier release of SAS Viya 3.5, use the steps here to update your 3.5 environment.   In the other sections of the report, System Status shows the characteristics of each host, including CPU, OS, and memory and shows the PostgreSQL version installed with SAS Viya 3.x. This information can be used to determine if the system supports upgrading to the latest release of Viya 3.5, and what resources may be required in a Viya 4 environment to support the migration.       Installed Software lists the versions of the RPMs installed in each server in the Viya 3.x environment.         Wrap Up   SAS has enhanced its Plan and Backup Ansible playbook for Viya 3.5 to include a system evaluation feature. This tool helps organizations assess whether their current environment is ready to migrate to SAS Viya 4. After using the sas-admin CLI inventory plug-in to create it, users can run the SAS Viya Plan and Backup playbook to generate a report that evaluates system health, software versions, and migration eligibility. If the environment meets the requirements, you can proceed with migration planning by running the inventory play of the playbook and ultimately creating a migration package. Otherwise, the report provides guidance on necessary updates.     Additional Resources   SAS® Viya® Platform: Full-System Migration from SAS® Viya® 3.x SAS Demo | Migration to SAS Viya: Assess and Package the Source 3.x System Keeping the SAS Administration Command-Line interfaces up-to-date     Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here. ... View more

A SAS Viya Administration question that I have heard multiple times recently is whether it is possible to perform a partial backup and restore of a SAS Viya environment. In addition to hearing it from colleagues and customers, I also ran into a case where we needed to implement a partial backup in our internal reporting environment. Given the interest, I thought Communities post. 🙂   The SAS Viya Backup and Restore application employs a comprehensive approach to system backup and restoration. It generates a full backup of your Viya system, enabling you to restore the entire backup in the event of an issue or for disaster recovery and migration purposes. This feature provides assurance that your system is fully safeguarded and can be restored from the backup.   However, it is important to note that the restore process is designed to restore the complete Viya backup package, rather than individual components. Consequently, the restoration process may take time and may necessitate temporary system downtime.   What if you want to protect key Viya content and be able to restore that content selectively? Using SAS Viya's transfer service, you can back up only specific assets rather than the entire system, and in return, you can selectively back up individual or groups of content items without any impact on the running environment.     Why use this method?   Granular control: backup and restore only what you need. Efficient: backup only content that has changed in a certain time frame. No downtime: Doesn’t require stopping services or system access.   A limitation of this approach is that the user must keep track of dependencies and ensure that dependent objects, such as data used in reports, are also exported.     How do we do it: sas-viya transfer?   You can export the content to a SAS Viya package to backup specific items like reports, models, flows, jobs etc. The export can be performed interactively, but it is most useful to script the process for backup purposes. When the process is scripted it can be run on a schedule. The transfer plugin of the sas-viya CLI can be used to export content from the command line. You can export a folder and its content or individual content items.   Automating the export process takes a few steps, is dependent on a third-party tool, JQ, and requires identifying the Uniform Resource Identifier(URI) of the content to export. A URI uniquely identifies each folder and content item in SAS Viya. The example below shows the export of a single SAS Viya folder.   Identify the URI (a unique identifier) of the folder Export the folder by passing the URI to the sas-viya transfer export Identify the package ID of the package created. Download from the Infrastructure Data Server the package created as a JSON file.   folderid=$(sas-viya --output json folders show --path /gelcontent/GELCorp/Sales | jq | jq -r '.["id"]') sas-viya --output text transfer export -u /folders/folders/$folderid --name SalesContent$folderid packageid=$(sas-viya --output json transfer list --name SalesContent$folderid | jq | jq -r '.items[]["id"]') sas-viya transfer download -f /tmp/viya4packages/SalesContent.json --id $packageid   With this approach, we can script the backup of SAS Viya content to JSON package files and selectively restore content.     How do we do it: pyviyatools?   The pyviyatools are command-line tools that call the SAS Viya REST API from Python. They are available on the SAS GitHub site and include several tools for backing up and restoring SAS Viya content. Let’s look at some tools for partially backing SAS Viya content. Any of these tools can be scheduled to perform a partial backup regularly.   To export the same folder shown in the example above, we can use exportfolder.py. This tool accepts the full folder path as a parameter, removing some of the complexity of exporting a folder with the sas-viya CLI.   exportfolder.py -f "/gelcontent/GELCorp/Sales/Reports" -d /tmp/viya4packages --filename SalesContent.json -q   The package with the ID 2080ab30-12a0-41cc-91f8-b748f5c5c4a9 was created. /usr/local/bin/sas-viya transfer download --file /tmp/viya4packages/SalesContent.json.json --id 2080ab30-12a0-41cc-91f8-b748f5c5c4a9 NOTE: Viya folder /gelcontent/GELCorp/Sales/Reports exported to json file /tmp/viya4packages/SalesContent.json.json   If you want a backup of all your content, exportfoldertree.py will export the complete Viya folder tree. Each subfolder at the root of the folder tree is exported to its own SAS Viya package.   exportfoldertree.py -d /tmp/allfolders -q   Select any image to see a larger version. Mobile users: To view the images, select the "Full" version at the bottom of the page.   These two tools allow us to back up folders in the SAS Viya folder tree. Since each folder is exported to its own package file, individual folders can be restored. What if we want to get down to the individaul content level and only backup content that has changed. The Snapshotcontent.py tool allows you to pass a Viya folder. It will recurse through the folder and subfolders and export each content item to a JSON package. The user can filter by date so that only content changed in a specific time period is exported. The following command will export all content under the /gelcontent folder. Each content item will be exported to its own JSON package.   python snapshotcontent.py -d /tmp/snapshot_all -f /gelcontent -q   The JSON packages are named for the full folder path and item name, enabling easy identification of individual items to restore.     Adding the -c parameter allows the user to select only content that has changed in the chosen number of days. This makes it easy to only backup specific content items that have changed. The command below will export any content under the /gelcontent folder that has changed in the last day.   python snapshotcontent.py -d /tmp/snapshot_all -f /gelcontent -q -c 1   Snapshot content can be scheduled to run on a daily basis creating a partial and incremental backup of SAS Viya Content.   NOTE: An earlier tool snapshotreports.py does the same for SAS Visual Analytics reports.     Restoring/Importing   On the restore side we have choices to import/restore any of the content from the JSON packages.   Using SAS Environment Manager to import the content, you can select what content is restored from each package.     There are two steps to import with the SAS-Viya CLI. Firstly, upload the JSON package to SAS Viya, capturing the package ID, then pass the package ID to the import command to import the package.   packageid=$(sas-viya --output json transfer upload --file /tmp/viya4packages/SalesContent.json | jq | jq -r '.["id"]') sas-viya --output text transfer import --id $packageid   The pyviyatools also has a tool that can help with importing. Importpackages.py will loop through all the packages in a directory and import them to SAS Viya.   importpackages.py -d /tmp/snapshot_today/ -q   There are few related pyviyatools that can also help with export and import of Viya artifacts. The names explain what they do.   exportcaslibs.py exportgeoproviders.py exportcustomgroups.py exportstudioflowcode.py importcaslibs.py importconfguration.py     Wrap Up   In summary, the SAS Viya Backup and Restore application provides a full-system backup approach,  however selective backup and restore of SAS Viya content can be achieved using alternative methods. The SAS Viya transfer service and pyviyatools offer granular control, efficiency, and minimal downtime, allowing users to selectively backup and restore individual content items or folders. By leveraging automation and scripting tools like sas-viya CLI and pyviyatools, organizations can implement an efficient, tailored partial backup strategy for SAS Viya environments. This strategy should be implemented to compliment but not replace SAS Viya Backup and Restore.     Additional Resources   SAS® Viya® Platform: Using the Command-Line Interface pyviyatools You CAN take it with you! Saving SAS Viya Content     Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here. ... View more

The SAS Content Assessment for PC Users is designed to evaluate and manage SAS content, specifically on Windows and Linux PCs. It focuses on identifying, cataloging and analyzing SAS content and assisting with migration planning. It is specifically aimed at SAS environments where users store their content, like SAS programs or Enterprise Guide Projects on a PC. It is a related tool to SAS 9 Content Assessment. SAS 9 Content Assessment Tool is a broader tool for assessing SAS 9 environments that include a metadata server. Let’s examine the SAS Content Assessment for PC users.   SAS 9 Content Assessment for PC Users   SAS 9 Content Assessment for PC Users is designed to be very easy to run so that individual SAS users can assess their own content. To run the application, there are four simple steps:   Select any image to see a larger version. Mobile users: To view the images, select the "Full" version at the bottom of the page.   NOTE: An administrator can also run the application against SAS content on a server or stored on shared storage.   Download   SAS Content Assessment for PC users can be downloaded from the SAS 9 Content Assessment Page at support.sas.com . The download links are at the bottom of the table and are the files that include “for PC Users” in the name. There are two downloads of SAS 9 Content Assessment for PC Users, one for Linux and one for Windows. They work in the same way. In this post, we will focus on the Windows version     Install and Configure   After downloading the file, users should unzip it to their PC. At that point, they are ready to configure the application. Configuring the application is simple. Edit the setup.txt file located in the assessment directory. There are three variables to edit.   SAS_HOME: is the primary location where the SAS products are installed. PATH: is a series of paths that the application should scan. In the example, we use one path. LABEL: is a unique label for the scan.     Run   After installing and configuring the tool, running it is straightforward. Double-click on the executable runme.bat. The application will open in a window, sending messages to that window as it runs each step. When it is complete, the application will describe where you can find the results.     What does it do?   SAS Content Assessment for PC Users includes three content assessment planning applications. They all execute when the user clicks on the runme.bat executable. The applications perform the same functions that they do in the full-blown Content Assessment:   inventory: documents the nature and volume of SAS content. In this case, it is SAS content stored on the file system. gatherSAScode: generates and stores SAS code from Enterprise Guide projects and SAS Catalogs to support code checking the application codeCheck: checks and documents the suitability of SAS 9 code for migration to SAS Viya   In addition, a utility application, publishAssessedContent, is run. This application creates the data mart and the reports.   What will a user learn?   Two HTML reports are created in the assessment directory surfacing the inventory and codecheck results.   Let’s first examine the inventory report, which has two subreports: artifacts and licensed products. Artifacts is the SAS content inventory created by scanning the the paths listed in the setup.txt file for SAS content. At the top of the artifacts page is a summary table with a count of each SAS 9 artifact found. This table gives a good idea of the nature and volume of content for this user.     Below the summary table, there’s a table for each artifact. It details the artifact’s location, size, and last modification date. This table serves as your inventory of what the tool has discovered. The summary table indicated that the user has 21 Enterprise Guide projects. Below is the table for Enterprise Guide Projects documenting their location and when they were last modified and accessed.     SAS 9 Code Check examines SAS programs to determine compatibility with SAS Viya. It examines SAS 9 code stored in program files on the file system and SAS code gathered from SAS artifacts by the gatherSAScode application. The SAS Code check will check the code for the following:   Syntax elements that are not supported in SAS Viya 4 Syntax elements that might have processing restrictions in SAS Viya 4 Hard-coded physical paths.   The code check application creates a series of reports covering a specific aspect of the code that may influence whether it can run on SAS Viya.     SAS Procedures document the SAS procedures used in the SAS programs scanned. The Libname, filename, infile statements and hard-coded paths  reports all document where the programs access the file system. This location may change in SAS Viya.   “SAS Programs That Are Incompatible” documents where SAS elements in the code will not run in SAS Viya, and “SAS Programs With Statements That Need Attention” documents SAS elements that may be restricted by default in SAS Viya.     What can a user do with the results?   The inventory results will give users an idea of the scale of their migration efforts by documenting all the SAS content on their PCs. In addition, the inventory can identify regularly used artifacts that are a priority to migrate and artifacts that are no longer used and can be deleted or archived.   SAS 9 Code Check will check a user’s SAS programs and Enterprise Guide projects to determine their compatibility with SAS Viya. A. It checks for syntax elements not supported in SAS Viya 4, syntax elements that might have processing restrictions in SAS Viya 4 and hard-coded physical paths. The code flagged as incompatible must be rewritten for use in SAS Viya. Code with processing restrictions may be a little easier to deal with. Some elements can potentially be replaced with other, more secure techniques. The report also flagged hard-coded file system paths, which, in many cases, may need to change in SAS Viya.  For an individual user, The report can be used to identify the level of effort required to migrate their SAS 9 Code to SAS Viya.   Summary   The SAS Content Assessment for PC Users is tailored for individual PC environments. In contrast, the SAS 9 Content Assessment Tool is designed to comprehensively evaluate server-based SAS 9 environments. Using the SAS Content Assessment for PC users, individual users with SAS content stored on their machine or in a location their machine accesses can get a feel for how easy it would be to transition to SAS Viya. They can use the results themselves or share them with a SAS Administrator as part of an overall migration project.   Additional Resources:   SAS 9 Content for Windows PC Users Documentation SAS 9 Content for Linux PC Users Documentation YOUTUBE Demo: SAS 9 Content Assessment for PC Users     Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here. ... View more

Continuing the series of posts on the SAS 9 Content Assessment reports, we review the SAS 9 Code Check report to see what information it provides, what conclusions can be drawn from it, and what likely actions you would take after reviewing it. As a reminder, this series of posts does not cover how to run SAS Content Assessment applications; instead, it focuses on using the results. Check out this post and demo for information about running the SAS Content Assessment.   SAS 9 Content Assessment Code Check   SAS 9 Code Check examines SAS programs to determine compatibility with SAS Viya. It examines SAS 9 code stored in program files on the file system. The SAS Code check will check the code for the following:   Syntax elements that are not supported in SAS Viya 4 Syntax elements that might have processing restrictions in SAS Viya 4 Hard-coded physical paths.   Before we examine what we can learn and what we can do with what we learn, let’s see how the code is checked. In the SAS 9 environment, we have SAS code in programs that reside on the file system in a directory "d:\\workshop\\gelcorp" and SAS code in SAS artifacts like Enterprise Guide projects, Stored Processes and Data Integration  Jobs. We want to check all of this code. For the programs on the file system, we can run code check directly against the directory where the files are stored, and all files with a .sas extension in the directory or any sub-directories will be checked. The scan tag is used to tag the data from this scan, and the tag can be used to subset the data on the report.   codeCheck.exe --scan-tag basecode --source-location "d:\\workshop\\gelcorp"   SAS artifacts such as SAS Catalogs, Stored Processes, Enterprise Guide Projects and User-written code in Data Integration Studio jobs cannot be processed directly by Code Check. A companion tool, Gather SAS Code, can generate SAS code from these artifacts and write it to the file system, supporting code assessment with Code Check.   gatherSASCode.exe --all codeCheck.exe --scan-tag bidi --source-location "d:\\workshop\\SAS9ContentAssessment\\assessment\\gatheredSASCode"   Multiple Code Check reports focus on each type of artifact; the format of each report is the same. In this post, we will use the SAS 9 Code Check for the SAS Viya Report, which surfaces the results for all scanned items.   Select any image to see a larger version. Mobile users: To view the images, select the "Full" version at the bottom of the page.   What can we learn?   Let’s look at the SAS 9 Code check for SAS Viya Report to see what we can learn.   The overview page summarizes all the programs scanned and provides general statistics such as the % Compatible Programs, % Incompatible Programs, % Compatible Statements, % InCompatible Statements, etc. From this page, you can understand how easy or difficult it will be to run these SAS programs on SAS Viya. The tag filter allows the user to subset the report based on the scan tag. In our case we will select the “basecode” scan tag to focus on the results for SAS programs stored on the file system.     Let’s look at the incompatible programs to see what issues the reports surface.   One key thing we can discover in the report is which SAS programs have syntax elements that are not supported. This information is provided on the Incompatible Programs Tab. The report below shows three categories of incompatibility.   PROCEDURE: a SAS procedure that does not run on SAS Viya ASSIGNMENT: an assignment statement that uses a syntax element not available in SAS Viya LIBNAME: a libname statement that will not work on SAS Viya     You can click on a row in the table to see the line of code with the incompatible statement. Let us look at one from each category. The first row in the report shows an incompatibility related to the LIBNAME statement. The details show that the line uses an information map libname. Information maps are a 9.4 artifact that does not exist in SAS Viya.      The PROCEDURE category surfaces SAS procedures that will not run in Viya. If we use the filter on the left, we can see that our code contains 8 procedures that will not run on SAS Viya. The procedures operate on the Metadata Server or the LASR Analytic Server; neither server exists in SAS Viya.     The ASSIGNMENT category surfaces programming elements that are not available in SAS Viya. A review of these items shows they are all metadata data step functions. These functions cannot run in SAS Viya as SAS Viya has no metadata server.     In addition to incompatible code, the report also flags syntax elements that might have processing restrictions in Viya 4. On the SAS Viya platform, the SAS Compute Server and the SAS/CONNECT Server are LOCKDOWN enabled by default. This security measure in the SAS Viya Platform restricts access to specific system files and SAS language features. Here are some key reasons that LOCKDOWN disables features:   Access Methods: Methods like EMAIL, FTP, HTTP/URL, and SOCKET are disabled to prevent unauthorized data transfer and communication, which could expose the system to security vulnerabilities. SAS Language Features: Features such as PROC GROOVY, PROC JAVAINFO, and PROC PYTHON are disabled to limit the execution of external code that could potentially harm the system or access sensitive data. Functions and CALL Routines: Functions like ADDR and ADDRLONG are restricted to prevent direct memory access, which could be exploited to manipulate or extract data inappropriately.   These restrictions help maintain a secure and controlled environment, ensuring only authorized and safe operations are performed within the SAS Viya environment. SAS 9.4 was more permissive than SAS Viya so the Code Check report flags, functions, access methods, procedures, and features in the code that may not run by default in SAS Viya. If you attempt to use a resource that is locked down, SAS issues an error message to the SAS log.   The Code Check report surfaces this information in the Review:Warnings tab. The report shows that our code has some elements that may not run by default in SAS Viya.     The Review Hard-coded paths tab lists the locations in the SAS 9 code where file system paths are referenced. In SAS Viya running on Kubernetes, the paths to files on the file system, such as SAS programs, data files, etc., may differ from those in SAS 9.4. You can use the report to identify hard-coded paths in libname and filename statements, SAS procedures, %include statements etc.     The report has two tabs we have not covered: Review: Library Engines and Advanced: Explore Details. The Library Engines tab documents all the library engines used in the SAS programs, and Explore Details allows us to drill down on the CodeCheck results in several different ways.   What do we do with what we learned?   Now that we have reviewed the content of the Code Check report, what can we do with what we have learned?   The code flagged as incompatible must be rewritten for use in SAS Viya. Any code that accesses the SAS Metadata server will no longer work in SAS Viya. In the SAS Viya architecture, the information stored in the SAS 9..4 metadata server is stored in other places like the SAS Infrastructure Data Server and the SAS Configuration Server. In SAS Viya, similar functionality is available using the SAS Viya REST APIs. Another example of a change is PROC IMSTAT, which was used to process data in the SAS 9 LASR Analytic server and would likely be replaced by PROC CAS to process data in the CAS Server in SAS Viya. The table below presents some common incompatibilities (thanks to Joseph Kneen for creating this table).     Code with processing restrictions may be a little easier to deal with. Some elements can potentially be replaced with other, more secure techniques. An alternative to changing the code in SAS Viya is to modify the LOCKDOWN settings to allow the restricted elements to execute. Lockdown can be modified to allow specific features. Check out the SAS Viya documentation regarding using the LOCKDOWN System Option and the LOCKDOWN Statement. This approach has some risks, as the SAS Viya environment will not be fully secured. However, this could be done temporarily and/or in a separate SAS Viya compute context until a more secure technique is implemented.   The report also flagged hard-coded file system paths, which, in many cases, may need to change in SAS Viya. If the hard-coded paths need to be changed in SAS Viya, then help is available. Another SAS Content Assessment Application, modifySASCode, can update paths in SAS code in batch. Before running modifySAScode, you need to execute Code Check. The Code check results are copied to the ASSESSMENT_INFILES directory in the Content Assessment install directory. The modifySASCode application uses the results to generate a mapping CSV file. You edit the mapping CSV file to map the old paths (SAS 9) to the new paths(SAS Viya). ModifySASCode uses the mapping CSV file to apply the new, modified paths to the SAS program files. It updates new copies of the SAS program files in the specified output location. It does not update any original SAS program files. Comments for each update are written in the new SAS program files. Check out this video to see CodeCheck and the modifySASCode application in action.   Wrap up   SAS 9 Code Check examines SAS programs to determine their compatibility with SAS Viya by analyzing SAS 9 code stored in program files on the file system. A companion application, gatherSASCode, can generate SAS code from SAS 9 artifacts to be processed by code check. It checks for syntax elements that are not supported in SAS Viya 4, syntax elements that might have processing restrictions in SAS Viya 4, and hard-coded physical paths.   The code check results are presented in a series of reports. The reports can be used in the migration planning phase to identify the level of effort required to migrate SAS 9 Code to SAS Viya. The report's details can help plan and execute the migration of SAS code to SAS Viya.   Here are some related resources, including the first two posts in this series:   POST: SAS 9 Content Assessment: Application Usage  POST: SAS 9 Content Assessment: Inventory SAS Demo | Using the modifySASCode Content Assessment Application – YouTube POST: Content Assessment: SAS 9 Code Check for Internationalization CLASS: Migrating SAS 9.4 Content to the SAS Viya Platform on learn.sas.com Content Assessment Download SAS 9.4 to Viya Content Migration Documentation SAS DEMO  | SAS Content Assessment Overview POST: Migrating from SAS 9 to Viya: what's the first step POST: Migration of Stored Processes to Jobs (update) POST: Content Assessment delivers utility applications to support SAS Viya Content Migration POST: Go with the flow; migrating Enterprise Guide Projects to SAS Studio Flows POST: SAS Viya 2021.2 – Migrating SAS Data Integration (DI) Studio Jobs to SAS Studio Flows POST: A first look at Migration from SAS 9.4 to Viya 4 SAS Demo | SAS Viya Migration of Enterprise Guide Project to SAS Studio Flows – YouTube SAS DEMO | Migrating SAS Data Integration Studio Jobs to SAS Studio Flows     Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here. ... 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