Q&A Resources for SAS® Software

In addition to SAS Technical Support, there are a number of community support resources available for SAS users too. I have compiled a list below of the sites I know of that use a Q&A or discussion format where SAS users and platform administrators can post questions and review or provide answers.

  1. SAS Discussion Forums: provided by SAS Institute and hosting a number of different forums relating to specific aspects of SAS software. This is one of my favourites – it has a high degree of activity and relevance, lots of useful questions, and answers provided by both SAS users and employees alike.
  2. SAS Professionals Discussion Forums: provides a number of different discussion forums including a forum dedicated to Platform Administrators
  3. run;submit: a site dedicated to Q&A related to SAS software. It looks like a StackExchange site but, as far as I know, I don’t think it is affiliated with StackExchange (it’s not in the StackExchange sites list).
  4. Stack Overflow (SAS tag): a collaborative Q&A site from StackExchange dedicated to programmer’s questions. This is a link to the SAS tag that filters the questions to those about SAS software.
  5. SAS-L / comp.soft-sys.sas: SAS-L has been around for a long time and has a loyal following. Unfortunately it does also contain spam and inappropriate content too so beware.
  6. Super User (SAS tag): a collaborative Q&A site from StackExchange dedicated to computer enthusiast’s questions. This is a link to the SAS tag which includes some questions relating to SAS software (not as many as found on Stack Overflow) mixed in with questions about Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) disk drives and I/O controllers – seems like there is a tag name clash.

All of the Q&A sites above provide RSS feeds so you can monitor them from an RSS reader without having to keep visiting them individually.

LinkedIn members will also find many SAS software related groups with discussion boards. There are too many to list here individually, but if you are interested you will find some of them listed on my LinkedIn public profile. You can also find those groups and others by searching for LinkedIn groups using the SAS keyword.

If you are aware of any other Q&A sites for SAS users then please let me know by leaving a comment.

Authorization Manager Plug-in and Custom Metadata Permissions

Something I’ve only noticed recently, which I haven’t seen in the SAS® 9.2 What’s New documentation, is an apparent change relating to support for custom, or user-defined, metadata permissions in the SAS Management Console Authorization Manager plug-in.

I hadn’t noticed this change before because I’ve not yet had a need for custom metadata permissions myself. I don’t think they are used very much and personally I’ve only heard of a single site that has used them in a custom application.

A while back someone asked me about support for custom permissions in our Metacoda Security Plug-ins product. It was this request that originally alerted me to the custom permissions feature in SAS 9.1.3. Whilst planning a new release of our plug-ins, I had been thinking about ways to add support for them, but when I went looking for custom permissions in SAS 9.2 they appeared to have vanished.

Below is a screenshot fragment of the SAS Management Console 9.1 Authorization Manager plug-in. Notice the Permissions folder where, with a right click, you can create your own custom permissions.

Compare that with this next screenshot fragment for the Authorization Manager plug-in from SAS Management Console 9.2. Notice there is no longer a Permissions folder.

It looks like the ability to add custom permissions has been removed – at least via SAS Management Console anyway. Considering all of the many metadata security improvements in SAS 9.2 relating to applicable permissions, effective permissions and changes in inheritance paths, I think I can understand why. To provide support for custom permissions in the SAS Management Console Authorization tab in SAS 9.2 would require gathering much more information about how the custom permission should be handled than the simple name and description collected in SAS 9.1.3 would provide – you would have to consider what objects types it applies to and how the permission should be inherited from object to object.

So, for now, it looks like we won’t be needing to add support for custom permissions in our Metacoda Security Plug-ins product. However, if you have any information about the potential for custom metadata permissions in SAS 9.2 and/or would like to see them supported in our plug-ins then please let me know. I’d also be interested in hearing from anyone who might have used custom metadata permissions in SAS 9.1.3 and finding out about your experiences in migrating your custom applications that used them to SAS 9.2.

You can find more information about custom metadata permissions in the SAS Management Console 9.1.3 User’s Guide > Managing Authorizations > Managing Permissions

Handy SAS Usage Note for Troubleshooting UNIX Authentication

Whilst troubleshooting why LDAP based users couldn’t authenticate against a SAS Metadata Server configured for host authentication, I found this handy resource: SAS Usage Note 39891: Using PROC PERMTEST to diagnose UNIX host authentication issues in SAS® 9.2. The server in question already had correctly functioning LDAP host authentication via PAM, it was just that the SAS Metadata Server wasn’t able to authenticate the LDAP users. The usage note helped me fix the problem by leading me to the SASFoundation/SAS9.2/utilities/bin/sasauth.conf file where I found it had methods=pw instead of methods=pam (must have chosen the wrong options at install time). I actually didn’t need to run PROC PERMTEST this time but the usage note contains clear instructions on how to when required. Interestingly PROC PERMTEST doesn’t seem to appear in the Base SAS® 9.2 Procedures Guide.

Spreading the WORK load

I found a handy tip from Rafi in the discussion Allocating SAS WORK Libraries Dynamically in SAS 9.2 in the LinkedIn group SAS Architects/Administrators/Implementation Specialist. It explains how to use a variation on the SAS system option WORK= to spread work libraries over a number of I/O paths using either random or available space methods. This can potentially help you improve I/O performance for work libraries en-masse, and/or get access to more available space, by spreading those work libraries over a number of different devices.

This usage of the WORK= SAS system option is documented in a number of places:

Interesting SAS notes relating to Portal Promotion

I noticed a couple of recent SAS usage notes relating to the new portal content promotion capability in SAS 9.2:

SAS Problem Note 42231 discusses a potential problem whereby incorrect letter casing in the specification of a template name could result in the removal of the entire Portal Application Tree. Of course, if you always follow the practice of doing a SAS metadata backup before any metadata promotions it wont be an issue as you will have a backup to restore from. It sounds like there is a hotfix planned.

The problem note also alerted me to SAS Usage Note 41692 which provides a link to download the portal promotion scripts for use with versions prior to 4.3. A quick look through the documentation shows the scripts can be used to go from a source environment of SAS 9.1.3 (or later) to a target environment of SAS 9.2 (or later) – no 9.1.3 to 9.1.3. I’m not entirely sure, but it also sounds like the downloadable scripts might also be of use to Portal 4.3 users who want to avoid the potential problem mentioned in 42231.

I’d be keen to hear of anyone’s experiences with the portal promotion tools if they want to share.