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Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Compare Metadata Objects

One of the new additions in the recently released Metacoda Plug-ins 6.1 R2 is a Compare Metadata Objects feature. This is a something that several customers have requested, particularly for the comparison of SAS metadata security objects like ACTs, Users, Groups, and Roles. One of the most common requests was to be able to compare users, who are supposed to be almost identical, but are found to have different access. Being able to compare the two users to see which groups they have, or don’t have, in common helps to speed up troubleshooting.

With the new Compare Metadata Objects dialog, you can compare any two metadata objects to show similarities and differences. Whilst it can be used to do a basic comparison of any 2 metadata objects, specific attention has been given to aid in the comparison of security objects, including ACT Permission Patterns, ACT and ACE participation, applied ACTs and ACEs, user/group membership of groups and roles, and members of groups and roles.

There are several ways to access this feature. The first is to use SAS Management Console Tools menu:

… this opens the comparison dialog where you can proceed to search for, and select, the two objects you want to compare. Continue reading “Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Compare Metadata Objects”

Metacoda Auth Domain Reviewer Libraries Tab

Last year I posted some information about a new Metacoda Auth Domain Reviewer plug-in that was planned for Metacoda Plug-ins 6.1. That Auth Domain Reviewer is now available with the recent Metacoda Plug-ins 6.1 R1 release and you may notice that it looks a little different to the screenshots I posted back then … it now has a Libraries tab.

The Libraries tab as was added based on feedback we got during early access testing by customers. They told us they would like to be able to see, for a selected authentication domain, all of the SAS® software libraries registered in metadata that are associated with that auth domain. That sounded like a great idea so we added it!

Thanks to those customers that suggested it and please keep those suggestions coming!

If you’d like to try out the new Auth Domain Reviewer plug-in you can login and download Metacoda Plug-ins 6.1 R1 from the Metacoda Customer Portal. If you don’t yet have a Metacoda login you can register for a free 30 day evaluation license to try the plug-ins in your own SAS platform installation.

Metacoda Plug-ins Batch Interface Setup Utility

This is a short post to let those readers who run or schedule Metacoda Plug-ins in batch know that, with the recent Metacoda Plug-ins 6.1 R1 release, we have published a GitHub repository to help with setup of the Metacoda Plug-ins Batch Interface. You can find this new repository, together with setup instructions, at https://github.com/Metacoda/metacoda-plugins-batch-setup

Metacoda Plug-in 6.1 HTML Export

The main benefit of this Metacoda Plug-ins Batch Interface Setup Utility is the automation of much of the previous manual work involved in setting up and site-specific tailoring of the batch interface samples. It also includes additional batch exports for Authentication Domains and External Identities (from the new Auth Domain Reviewer and External Identity Manager plug-ins). The Metacoda recommended practice starter tests for SAS metadata security have also been updated.

If you have any questions or comments please let me know by posting below. You can also contact us via the Metacoda contact form or send us an email at Metacoda support.

Configuring Metacoda Identity Sync Utils for AutoCall

I needed to extract some SAS identity related metadata today using the Metacoda Identity Sync Utils on GitHub. That repository contains some macros we publish to help our customers and partners when they need to get hold of some identity related metadata in SAS tables for custom Identity Sync processing or other reporting requirements (if the standard SAS %MDUEXTR macro doesn’t meet their needs).

Since I use these macros on a semi-regular basis, I decided to make them available to the SAS platform as autocall macros so I could just use them in my SAS code without having to remember where they were stored and %include them. I thought I’d post some brief notes on how to set it up in case you want to do the same (and for when I need it on another SAS platform installation). Continue reading “Configuring Metacoda Identity Sync Utils for AutoCall”

Keyword Bookmark Search with SAS Support

I had noticed recently that when I searched for SAS documentation on Google I wasn’t finding the SAS 9.4 documentation pages I wanted. I tweeted about it, found others had the same issue, and that SAS are working to address it. In the interim, the answer was simple of course … search using support.sas.com instead. However, I’m impatient and am used to just typing my query in the web browser address bar (e.g. sas 9.4 iomserverappender) and then clicking on the first or second link in the search results (when the search query is unique enough). It’s very fast. Finding and clicking a bookmark, waiting for the page to load, locating the search field on the page, typing in the query, clicking the submit button, waiting for the search results page to load, and clicking on the right link …. well that’s quite a bit more work! ;) [#FirstWorldProblems]

So, I’ve switched to using another method where I can keep typing my SAS 9.4 documentation search in the browser address bar AND use support.sas.com at the same time. It might even work out better than before.

In Chrome/Chromium you can add search engines with keywords (right click over the address bar and select Edit search engines… from the context menu):

In Firefox you have keyword searches via bookmarks: Continue reading “Keyword Bookmark Search with SAS Support”