SAS 9 Content Assessment for PC Users

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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:

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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.

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