Month: May 2018

Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Locate Home Folder for a User

It is usually obvious where a SAS user’s metadata home folder (My Folder or private user folder) is – just look under /User Folders/ (or /Users/ in older SAS versions) for a folder with the user’s name. Sometimes, however, it can be a little trickier to locate: the user name may be cryptic or the user may have been added and deleted in metadata multiple times and you have folders with numeric suffixes i.e. name, name(1), name(2) etc.

To be confident, a user’s home folder can be found specified in metadata. As highlighted in the screenshot below, using the Metacoda User Reviewer, select the user, right click and select Advanced Properties from the context menu. In the Advanced Properties dialog, and the Associated Objects tab you should see the home folder listed in the row where the Association Name is AssociatedHomeFolder.

Metacoda User Reviewer Advanced Properties AssociatedHomeFolder

As a bonus tip, if you need to find home folders for users that are no longer present in metadata see Finding Private User Folders for Deleted SAS Platform Users

Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Find ResponsibleParty Objects for a User

Sometimes you want to find all of the SAS metadata objects a user may be associated with. Where SAS applications have tagged a user as a ResponsibleParty, we can use the Metacoda Metadata Explorer with an advanced XMLSELECT style query to find them. Use the following query (including curly braces) in the Search field, replacing the Name value (demobob here) with the name (not display name) of the user you want to look for:

{{{ *[ResponsibleParties/ResponsibleParty/Persons/Person[@Name='demobob'] }}}

This will show all objects in metadata where demobob is present as one of the responsible parties (see below).​ Continue reading “Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Find ResponsibleParty Objects for a User”

Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Advanced Expression-Based Filters (Protected Object Reviewer)

This post continues a series of examples on Advanced Expression-Based Filters for Metacoda Plug-ins, in this case for the Protected Object Reviewer.

Here are some expressions that you may find useful to copy and paste into the filter bar of the Metacoda Protected Object Reviewer as a starting point for finding interesting sets of SAS metadata objects that have had access controls, Access Control Templates (or ACTs) and/or Access Control Entries (ACEs or explicit permissions), applied to them:

Protected Tree Branch Objects: show folders and objects, underneath the /Vegas Enterprises metadata tree branch, that have had any ACTs or ACEs applied to them.

#@ path.startsWith("/Vegas Enterprises")

ACT Protected Tree Branch Objects: show folders and objects, underneath the /Vegas Enterprises metadata tree branch, that have had ACTs applied (and optionally ACEs). Continue reading “Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Advanced Expression-Based Filters (Protected Object Reviewer)”

Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Advanced Expression-Based Filters (ACE Reviewer)

This post continues a series of examples on Advanced Expression-Based Filters for Metacoda Plug-ins, in this case for the ACE Reviewer.

Here are some expressions that you may find useful to copy and paste into the filter bar of the Metacoda ACE Reviewer as a starting point for finding interesting sets of SAS Access Control Entries (ACEs or explicit permissions):

Tree Branch ACEs: show explicit permissions on folders and objects underneath the /Vegas Enterprises/HR metadata tree branch.

#@ protectedObjectPath.startsWith("/Vegas Enterprises/HR")

Object Type ACEs: show explicit permissions on folders (excluding the root folder) Continue reading “Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Advanced Expression-Based Filters (ACE Reviewer)”

Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Advanced Expression-Based Filters (ACT Reviewer)

Many of the Metacoda Plug-ins have Filter Bars which provide a way to filter the contents displayed and show an interesting subset. Normally they do simple case-insensitive “contains” filtering on key attributes like name and description (the filter bar label indicates which attributes are used).

Metacoda Plug-ins Filter Bar

Simple text filtering, as described above, is sufficient for many needs. However, for more advanced requirements there is the ability to switch to expression-based filters which are much more flexible. To use expression-based filtering you add a #@ prefix at the beginning of the filter bar field. What follows is then an expression that can use many of the other attributes/columns available in the tables. This expression is written as a Java like expression (BeanShell to be precise) and must resolve to a boolean true/false to determine whether a row should be shown in the table. Any errors in the expression will be shown in a popup error dialog.

This will allow you to do complex expressions like this in the User Reviewer: Continue reading “Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Advanced Expression-Based Filters (ACT Reviewer)”