Author: Paul Homes

SAS 9.4 M8 Java 11 and CORBA

Recently I was trying to run some custom Java code using the latest SAS 9.4 M8 libraries with Java 11 and ran into a unexpected exception:

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/omg/CORBA/Object

This was a surprise as CORBA underpins the SAS 9.4 IOM servers and their APIs (like the SAS Metadata Server and SAS Workspace Server). My code worked fine with SAS 9.4 M7 and so I assumed it must be related to the switch to Java 11 in SAS 9.4 M8 and there must be a way to get it working again.

I searched up Java 11 and CORBA, and as one often does, landed on a StackOverflow page: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13517497/java-lang-noclassdeffounderror-org-omg-corba-interfacedef

One of the answers Continue reading “SAS 9.4 M8 Java 11 and CORBA”

SAS Management Console: My Favourite SAS App

SAS® Management Console is by far my favourite SAS application. As a SAS platform administrator I like it because I can use it to administer much of the SAS 9 platform. I also like that I can use it to reach into, query and update SAS metadata in the SAS Metadata Server. My favourite interaction with SAS Management Console though is as a software developer and in this post I’ll explain why.

Way back in the mid 2000’s, when SAS 9.1.3 was the most recent version, I discovered SAS documentation for a SAS Management Console plug-in API and it spurred my imagination. Even with the best of applications there are always ways they can be improved, from one-off organization specific requirements to generic everyone-could-use-these features. The developers and designers of SAS Management Console, right from the early days with SAS 9.1, had planned for it to be extended with a documented API for adding custom functionality directly into the SAS application. I imagine this started from internal SAS requirements but I was very happy it made it into external documentation for us to use too. That was of course where Metacoda Plug-ins started. It’s amazing to think that I’ve been working with this application and it’s plug-in API for over 15 years.

What sort of things does the SAS Management Console plug-in API support? Continue reading “SAS Management Console: My Favourite SAS App”

SAS Management Console 9.4 M8: omitoolsmc requested Woden

After a recent installation of SAS 9.4 M8 I needed to refresh the SAS clients on a Windows installation. I did an Upgrade-in-Place (UIP) for those clients which updated my SAS Management Console 9.4 M7 installation to 9.4 M8. When I started SAS Management Console 9.4 M8 to test it I encountered the following error:

SAS Management Console 9.4 M8 omitoolsmc error

Clicking the Details button revealed more info: Continue reading “SAS Management Console 9.4 M8: omitoolsmc requested Woden”

SAS Documentation Feedback

SAS Documentation is a wonderful resource. I have spent lots of time reading and searching through it, learning new things, refreshing existing knowledge, or trying to work out why something I am doing is not working. Very rarely you might encounter an error, as I did yesterday whilst reading about the changes in the recent SAS 9.4 M8 release. SAS have made it very easy to provide feedback when you encounter such things – up in the top right hand side of the page there’s a Feedback link, as highlight in the screenshot below:

Feedback button on the SAS Documentation site

Clicking on that link will open your email client and pre-populate a ready made email with the title of that page in the subject line and a link to the page in the body. All you need to do is provide your comments and hit send.

I was very impressed with the response to the feedback I provided yesterday. Reading my email this morning I already had replies and the documentation had already been updated too. How fast was that!

SAS 9.4 M8 … Some Surprises

SAS/IntrNet Hat Something I, and others, have been looking forward to for a while has been the release of SAS® 9.4 M8, and so I was excited to see Margaret Crevar’s SAS Communities post about it: SAS 9.4 M8 is now available!!. Chris Hemedinger also posted about it on the SAS Users blog: SAS 9.4 Maintenance 8 is available. I was keen to get stuck into the detail in the documentation: What’s New in SAS 9.4 Guide to Software Updates, January 2023 (SAS 9.4, Rev. 940_23w05), SAS 9.4M8 Is Released.

M8 is the latest maintenance release of SAS 9.4 and I have heard several times how it will help alleviate some of the uncertainty around the future of the SAS 9.4 platform by extending Standard Support for SAS 9.4 for another 5 years (until 2028) and, as Chris mentioned in his post, “… demonstrate the commitment of SAS to support users of the SAS 9.4 platform for many years to come.”

I find the fastest way to review the M8 changes is to search for “M8” in the large PDF documents rather than reading through each individual web page:

In my reading, Continue reading “SAS 9.4 M8 … Some Surprises”