sas 9 the first enterprise-class business intelligence platform

SAS®

9The First Enterprise-Class

Business Intelligence Platform?

SAS de scribes SAS®9 as “the first En ter prise-Class Busi ness In tel li gencePlat form”. What does that mean? Why is it im por tant for your busi ness?How close does SAS come to meet ing the re quire ments im plicit in such a

description?

Author: Philip HowardPublished: May 2004

ResearchBloor

Executive SummaryThe busi ness en vi ron ment in which se nior ex ec u tives have to op er ate is be com ing

more and more de mand ing. On the one hand, there is ever in creas ing com pet i tive

pres sure. On the other there is a grow ing re quire ment to meet cor po rate gov er nance

and com pli ance reg u la tions. At the same time you need to drive down costs while si -

mul ta neously im prov ing performance and productivity.

While squar ing this cir cle in volves the en tire or gani sa tion, with all of its re sources, of

what ever type, an im por tant com po nent of this so lu tion must in volve soft ware and,

in par tic u lar, soft ware that sup ports de ci sion-mak ing pro cesses that are de signed to

im prove op er a tional ef fi ciency and the align ment of the or gani sa tion with its stra -

tegic goals.

How ever, the pro vi sion of timely in for ma tion needs to ex tend across the en ter prise

to all of its knowl edge work ers and be yond — some thing that of fer ings in this area

have failed to do in the past. Fur ther, such so lu tions must also ad dress the gov er -

nance and cost of own er ship issues mentioned.

SAS®9 has been spe cif i cally de signed to meet all of these needs. In this white pa per

we con sider what would be re quired of a so lu tion that would meet all of the needs

out lined, and then we con sider the SAS®9 of fer ing and how it stands up to the cri te ria

identified.

Business Intelligence

It would be un fair to say that tra di tional busi ness in tel li gence so lu tions have failed.

Tra di tion ally, busi ness in tel li gence ven dors have claimed that they could pro vide

query and anal y sis ca pa bil i ties that could be used across the or gani sa tion. How ever,

that has not been true in prac tice. The re al ity is that most com pa nies to day have si los

of sep a rate so lu tions for sep a rate user com mu ni ties. They use re port ing so lu tions for

the mass of the workforce, ana lyt ics and OLAP (on-line an a lytic pro cess ing) tools for

busi ness an a lysts, data min ing so lu tions and pre dic tive ana lyt ics for spe cial ists, and

Microsoft Ex cel or some other spread sheet prod uct on a more or less help your self

ba sis. On top of this, it is of ten the case that dif fer ent de part ments or di vi sions within

a com pany may have se lected dif fer ent solutions in each of these areas (especially for

reporting and OLAP).

While each of these so lu tions may be fine in its own right, their pro lif er a tion is a se ri -

ous prob lem. It is not hard to spot the rea sons for this. In prin ci ple, all of these so lu -

tions are com ple men tary: they fre quently rely on the same source data and the re sults

are of ten used, or at least viewed, by peo ple across the or gani sa tion (re gard less of

role). To put it sim ply, all of these busi ness in tel li gence tools need to work together

collaboratively.

There are, po ten tially, two ways to do this. The first is that you could, at least in the -

ory, build a super-prod uct that did ev ery thing: re port ing, ad hoc que ries, spread -

Page 1 © Bloor Research 2004

SAS®9

sheets, in-depth anal y sis, the lot. How ever, such a prod uct would not be prac ti cal.

Dif fer ent us ers have dif fer ent re quire ments and dif fer ent ca pa bil i ties and to build a

prod uct that had suf fi cient de tail for busi ness an a lysts and suf fi cient ease-of-use for

line man ag ers, all in a sin gle pack age, would be a practical impossibility.

The al ter na tive is to pro vide a suite of in ter faces, each de -

signed with a par tic u lar user com mu nity in mind, but with a

com mon look and feel, that is in te grated un der the cov ers.

In this con text, it is im por tant to un der stand what we mean

by “in te grated un der the cov ers”. To take a sim ple ex am ple;

while there may be sev eral user in ter faces you only re ally

need one re port ing en gine, you only need one sched ul ing fa -

cil ity, and it makes sense to have a com mon method for ac -

cess ing data. In other words, you have a set of un der ly ing

fa cil i ties that serve as a com mon “plat form” for the var i ous

front-end ca pa bil i ties that are pro vided. It is also worth

point ing out that it makes sense if this com mon plat form

also sup ports ap pro pri ate tech ni cal ap pli ca tions that also

need ac cess to these shared fa cil i ties. Such a solution would

look something like what is illustrated in Figure 1.

A sec ond ary, but no less im por tant, ad van tage of such an ap proach is that you can

eas ily pass re sults from one end user en vi ron ment to an other, thus pro mot ing col lab -

o ra tive working.

Corporate Governance

Stan dards for cor po rate gov er nance and com pli ance reg u la tions abound. We do

not in tend to dis cuss any of these in de tail. How ever, one of the key points in

many of the leg is la tive re quire ments is to be able to es tab lish the ve rac ity of pub -

lished data. In par tic u lar, you need to be able to trace that data back to its source

and see how it was sub se quently ag gre gated and ma nip u lated. This is re ferred to

as Data Lin eage. Fur ther, you need to be able to dem on strate that you have ap -

pro pri ate mech a nisms in place that can ac cu rately trace the lin eage of any piece of

data.

The pre-req ui site for pro vid ing data lin eage is that you know where data is and what

has been done to it. How ever, man ag ing the data is not enough. You also need to be

able to track and man age the metadata (data about data) that de scribes the orig i nal

data. To put this sim ply, data is just a value: you might have a field that has “205" in it.

That is an item of data. It is not un til you know that that fig ure rep re sents monthly

sales of a par tic u lar prod uct, say, that that data has any meaning.

Metadata ac tu ally goes be yond this sim ple ex am ple. It has im pli ca tions for IT: for ex -

am ple, that “prod uct sales” must be a nu meric value, but it also has more pro found

con se quences in busi ness terms. For ex am ple, sup pose that sales man ag ers are asked

to pro duce a re port show ing monthly sales and prof its. The ques tion is, how do you

de fine sales? Does that mean or ders or does it just mean or ders that have been paid

for? Fur ther, what is profit? Does it in clude VAT or sales tax, or not? Does it in clude

delivery charges or not?

© Bloor Research 2004 Page 2

SAS®9

EndUser 1

EndUser n

TechnicalTools

Common Services

Ease of use Sophistication

Figure 1: Technical applications sharing common services

Metadata can be used to de fine cor po rate stan dards for such things as what you mean

by sales or prof its and, once these def i ni tions have been pro duced, they can be used

and re used by man ag ers and other per son nel through out the or gani sa tion. Note that

this is de sir able for its own sake, leav ing aside any ques tion of cor po rate governance.

How does this re late to data lin eage? Be cause it is pre cisely such things as sales and

prof its that need to be traced, and the abil ity to do this de pends upon hav ing re li able

metadata that can be used by the whole en ter prise.

Data lin eage there fore re quires the abil ity to track and man age both data and the

metadata that de scribes it. That, how ever, is by no means al ways a sim ple task. In par -

tic u lar, it be comes in creas ingly com plex and dif fi cult if you have mul ti ple si los of prod -

ucts for dif fer ent busi ness in tel li gence needs. Data lin eage is much eas ier to achieve

when the en vi ron ment is in te grated and, in par tic u lar, when there is a sin gle re pos i tory

for all of your metadata. In other words, good cor po rate gov er nance will be much eas -

ier to achieve when a sin gle plat form is used, just as it is with busi ness in tel li gence.

This is not quite the end of the cor po rate gov er nance story. In or der to en sure data

lin eage is ac cu rate, it is im por tant that all data and metadata is fully con trolled and

that you have a com plete au dit trail of all changes that are made. This raises a par tic u -

lar prob lem with the use of Microsoft Ex cel and spread sheet tech nol ogy in gen eral.

Ex cel is not se cure, is prone to er rors (not in the soft ware but in the for mu lae and cal -

cu la tions that are de fined by the user), any body who wants to can change data in a

spread sheet and, above all, there is no au dit trail. While it is un likely that any one will

stop us ing Ex cel any time soon, it is there fore im por tant that the use of Ex cel can be

con trolled within the busi ness in tel li gence en vi ron ment, or that comparable facilities

are provided directly.

Cost of Ownership

We have, by now, es tab lished the ad van tages of an in te grated ap proach to busi ness

in tel li gence so lu tions, with a sin gle plat form and metadata re pos i tory serv ing a va ri -

ety of front-end ap pli ca tions, tai lored to the needs of dif fer ent user com mu ni ties.

How ever, the ben e fits of such an ap proach go be yond en sur ing that ev ery one is

speak ing the same lan guage and meet ing com pli ance re quire ments. In par tic u lar,

there are two as pects of such an ap proach that should help to re duce the cost of

ownership of such an integrated product set.

The first and most ob vi ous ad van tage of in te gra tion from a cost per spec tive is that

you are deal ing with a sin gle sup plier rather than mul ti ple ven dors. This puts you in a

better ne go ti at ing po si tion, re duces ad min is tra tion and has other ob vi ous ben e fits

that we do not need to go into. How ever, that is not the end of the story.

Ar gu ably, a more sig nif i cant ben e fit de riv ing from an in te grated ap proach is that the

whole so lu tion be comes much more man age able. This ac tu ally re lates back to the

metadata that we dis cussed above, as it is of ten this that en tails the larg est ad min is tra -

tive over head. If metadata is held in mul ti ple places then en sur ing that it re mains syn -

chro nised can be come a ma jor over head and, of course, this in curs costs. It is

there fore ben e fi cial to have an in te grated plat form with a sin gle metadata repository

purely from a cost point-of-view.


SAS®9

More over, the cor ol lary is that the more prod ucts that work off this sin gle re pos i -

tory the better. In prac tice this means that it will be ad van ta geous if com ple men tary

tech nol o gies, such as those that ex tract data from source sys tems and load them

into the data ware house, and data qual ity tools of var i ous sorts, are also sup ported

by this same plat form since this will, again, make the whole en vi ron ment more

man age able and re duce as so ci ated ad min is tra tive costs. This is best il lus trated by

ex am ple. Sup pose that you want to change one of your query ap pli ca tions, which

ac cesses data from a va ri ety of orig i nal sources. If it is easy to dis cover where all

that orig i nal data is (which it will be in an in te grated en vi ron ment that pro vides im -

pact anal y sis and sim i lar fa cil i ties) then the main te nance of that ap pli ca tion will be

very much sim pler, and there fore less costly, than in a dis crete en vi ron ment where

such information is not available.

Other considerations

While of fer ing an in te grated so lu tion based upon a sin gle metadata re pos i tory is a re -

quire ment for an en ter prise-class busi ness in tel li gence of fer ing, it is not, in it self, suf -

fi cient. There are two other ma jor re quire ments. The first of these is that the

en vi ron ment should pro vide suf fi cient fa cil i ties to sup port the en ter prise’s needs in

terms of per for mance, scalability, re sil ience, and so forth. This should be self-

evident.

Sec ondly, how ever ex ten sive a so lu tion of this type may be, it will not ex ist in iso la -

tion. In par tic u lar, there are a va ri ety of com ple men tary tech nol o gies that need to use

the same metadata and busi ness rules that will be used in the en ter prise-class busi ness

in tel li gence plat form. For ex am ple, data mod el ling, which is used to setup and de fine

the data ware house, does not typ i cally fall within the area of com pe tence of busi ness

in tel li gence ven dors. Sim i larly, the abil ity (and it is an ad van tage, as we have seen) to

load data from source sys tems to gether with fa cil i ties for en sur ing the qual ity of that

data, which will also need to use the same metadata, is not a pre-req ui site for en ter -

prise-class ca pa bil ity though it will be an ad van tage if this is pro vided by the same

sup plier. An other area where such open ness is re quired is in front-end ap pli ca tions

such as call cen tres, self-ser vice web-based ap pli ca tions and oth ers, where it is of ten

the case that you need to ac cess the busi ness in tel li gence en vi ron ment, for ex am ple

to en sure con sis tent nam ing con ven tions (such as cli ent names in a call centre) or to

do access scoring mechanisms to support on-line credit risk checks.

In other words it is im por tant that the en vi ron ment pro vided by the busi ness in tel li -

gence ven dor sup ports open stan dards so that de tails can be shared with other en vi -

ron ments and tools as eas ily as pos si ble. In ad di tion to stan dards for metadata, this

par tic u larly means sup port for open APIs (ap pli ca tion pro gram ming interfaces) and

Web Services.

Summary

To con clude, an en ter prise-class busi ness in tel li gence so lu tion has two key char ac ter -

is tics from which all other re quire ments flow. First, it must of fer a wide range of dif -

fer ent ca pa bil i ties that have been de signed to sup port the needs of dif fer ent user

com mu ni ties within the or gani sa tion; and sec ond, all of these fa cil i ties must be in te -

grated through a sin gle metadata re pos i tory that is open to out side ac cess. Scalability,


SAS®9

re sil ience and per for mance are also pre-req ui sites but these are hardly unique to a

business intelligence environment.

In the fol low ing sec tion we will de scribe SAS®9 and see how it meets the cri te ria we

have dis cussed for an en ter prise-class plat form.


SAS®9

Product descriptionIntroduction

Al though tech ni cally a part of the busi ness in tel li gence com mu nity, SAS has al ways

been best known for its sta tis ti cal and data min ing so lu tions on the one hand, and its

in dus try-spe cific an a lyt i cal so lu tions on the other. While it has of fered a va ri ety of

busi ness in tel li gence prod ucts for some time, there has re mained a per cep tion that

SAS was not re ally in the same space as com pa nies such as Busi ness Ob jects and

Cognos. With SAS®9 (which is ac tu ally in ver sion 9.1) SAS has set out its stall to

compete directly with these vendors.

How ever, SAS®9 is more than just a busi ness in tel li gence plat form. It is, in fact, the

plat form for the en tire SAS so lu tion set, so that all of its an a lytic ap pli ca tions, its data

and text min ing prod ucts, its clickstream anal y sis and ev ery thing else that it does, in -

clud ing busi ness in tel li gence, will be based upon the SAS®9 platform.

It should be ap pre ci ated that de vel op ing SAS®9 has not been a triv ial task. It was an -

nounced as long ago as 2002 and, no doubt, it was be ing planned long be fore that, so

a lot of man years have gone into its de vel op ment. In par tic u lar, prior to this re lease,

there was no sin gle metadata re pos i tory that un der pinned the en tire prod uct set. If

you had any di verse set of SAS prod ucts you would have mul ti ple re pos i to ries and,

while you could pass in for ma tion from one to an other, there were the in ev i ta ble

com plex i ties of hav ing to man age these re pos i to ries and the move ment of metadata

be tween them. By de vel op ing an in te grated, sin gle plat form so lu tion this com plex ity

has sim ply been re moved, though that does not mean that all com plex ity has been

elim i nated, be cause there re main is sues in inter oper -

ating with other en vi ron ments, though this is a fail ure

in the current standards that are available rather than

anything specific to SAS.

The fact that SAS®9 pro vides an in te grated plat form

will be a sig nif i cant boon for ex ist ing and new us ers

of tra di tional SAS prod ucts. How ever, in this white

pa per we are in ter ested in SAS®9 within the con text

of busi ness in tel li gence. The truth is that with out the

sin gle plat form ap proach pro vided by SAS®9, the

com pany could not le git i mately of fer the sort of com -

pre hen sive, en ter prise-wide busi ness in tel li gence

solution that it is offering.

Architecture

Fig ure 2 above il lus trates the ar chi tec ture of SAS®9 within the con text of busi ness in -

tel li gence. How ever, for the pur poses of this white pa per, we are not go ing to dis cuss

all of the el e ments shown here. Nev er the less, this di a gram is use ful be cause it il lus -

trates the dif fer ent user com mu ni ties that SAS is ad dress ing, and the prod ucts that


SAS®9

Figure 2: SAS®9 architecture

are ap pli ca ble to each of these sec tors, no ta bly SAS Web Re port Stu dio, the SAS

Add-in for Microsoft Of fice, and SAS En ter prise Guide®, which we will discuss

below.

It is also use ful in that it iden ti fies the fact that SAS®9 uses dif fer ent serv ers for dif -

fer ent pur poses, for ex am ple a sep a rate OLAP Server and Metadata Server. Fur ther,

it in di cates the three tier ar chi tec ture that has been em ployed al though not the fact

that ac tu ally an n-tier en vi ron ment is en vis aged. For ex am ple, the SAS In for ma tion

De liv ery Por tal is J2EE com pli ant and it will be res i -

dent on an ap pli ca tion server, with end us ers be ing

browser-based. As far as the serv ers them selves are

con cerned, these may be de ployed on main frame

(z/OS), Win dows, UNIX (HP-UX, AIX and Solaris)

and Linux plat forms, and sup port a broad range of

stan dards run ning from J2EE and COM through

LDAP di rec to ries to SOAP and UDDI, and from

messaging en vi ron ments such as WebSphere MQ

and MSMQ to OLE DB and OLE DB for OLAP.

Re fer ring back to Fig ure 2, we will not be dis cuss ing

the mid-tier com po nents and nor will we be dis cuss -

ing SAS En ter prise Miner®, which is the com pany’s

data min ing and pre dic tive ana lyt ics tool. In prac tice,

what we will be dis cuss ing in more de tail is better il -

lus trated in Fig ure 3.

As can be seen, the var i ous front-end prod ucts (of which SAS In for ma tion Map Stu -

dio and SAS ETL Stu dio are de signed for use by the IT de part ment rather than end

us ers) all run against the same metadata re pos i tory and ac cess the same data, through

a com mon set of serv ers. In more gen eral terms, we will dis cuss SAS®9’s back-end

ca pa bil i ties later and start by con sid er ing the var i ous tools pro vided for the dif fer ent

front-end user communities.

SAS® Web Report Studio

SAS Web Re port Stu dio does what it says on the tin. That is, it is a browser-

based prod uct for view ing and cre at ing re ports. Some peo ple will use it sim -

ply to view re ports while oth ers, de pend ing on their role, will be al lowed to

cre ate re ports that can be viewed by other us ers. In the lat ter case, a wiz ard is

pro vided to help you cre ate re ports while more ex pe ri enced us ers can em -

ploy the Re port Builder. Note that be cause of the busi ness metadata that is

stored by SAS®9 (see later), all the de scrip tions of data sources and the data

items that you can re port on are ex pressed in busi ness ter mi nol ogy rather

than technical jargon.

SAS® Add-in for Microsoft Office

The SAS Add-in for Microsoft Of fice of fers a num ber of fa cil i ties. For ex am ple, it al -

lows you to in clude a re port from SAS Web Re port Stu dio within a Microsoft Word

doc u ment, or a busi ness in tel li gence graphic or chart from SAS En ter prise Guide


SAS®9

Figure 3: A single BI platform

Figure 4: Screenshot of Web Report Studio

within a PowerPoint pre sen ta tion. More over, since the graphic may be dy nam i cally

up dated, this has the sig nif i cant ad van tage that you can be pre sent ing with dynam -

ically updated data.

The way that this col lab o ra tion works (and, in deed, it ap plies across all the el e ments

of SAS®9) is that the prod uct makes use of stored pro cesses. These are a way of en -

cap su lat ing busi ness rules. Such a busi ness rule might sim ply lead to a de rived data

field or it might re sult in a re port or a chart or what ever is ap pro pri ate. In any case,

the rule (stored pro cess) is held within the SAS Metadata Re pos i tory so that it can be

re used by any par tic i pat ing tool. So, for ex am ple, you could use SAS En ter prise

Guide to pub lish the re sults of a data min ing ex er cise within SAS En ter prise Miner,

or you could com bine the lat ter with ETL ca pa bil i ties. In ef fect, you can move up and

down the lev els of so phis ti ca tion within the product set, as required.

Note that what is ac tu ally hap pen ing here is that the pre sen ta tion of in for ma tion has

been sep a rated from the busi ness logic: the stored pro cess de fines the lat ter, while

the user in ter face de fines how the in for ma tion will be pre sented. This has the ad van -

tage that can you change one with out impacting on the other.

In the case of the SAS Add-in for Microsoft Of fice there is a mech a nism for di rectly

pass ing this logic de fined in a stored pro cess to the rel e vant part of Of fice. For ex ter -

nal ap pli ca tions, stored pro cesses can also be ex posed as Web ser vices. Of course,

the most com mon use of the in te gra tion pro vided by SAS will be with Microsoft Ex -

cel, whereby SAS pro vides au to mated fa cil i ties to ex port data gen er ated us ing any of

its other prod ucts into Microsoft Ex cel, where the data can be ma nip u lated fur ther.

Note, how ever, that once that data has been ex ported, it is within the Ex cel do main

and outside of the SAS environment.

SAS® Enterprise Guide®

SAS En ter prise Guide is the com pany’s prod uct that fits most clearly into the con -

ven tional busi ness in tel li gence and OLAP space in -

hab ited by the likes of Busi ness Ob jects. As in di cated

in Fig ure 2, it uses (or may use-see later) its own

OLAP Server and it has ex actly the sort of slice-and-

dice, pivot, drill down, and other ca pa bil i ties that you

would ex pect. As il lus trated in Fig ure 5, you can out -

put re ports and charts in a va ri ety of for mats. In par -

tic u lar, given that SAS has al ways been well-known

for the ex cel lence of both its sta tis tics and the graph i -

cal rep re sen ta tion thereof, it is not sur pris ing that

SAS En ter prise Guide is also strong in these ar eas.

Note the abil ity to ap pend notes to charts and re -

ports, which will be useful in collaborative en -

vironments.

In more tech ni cal terms, SAS sup ports both multi-di -

men sional and hy brid data stores and there is na tive

sup port for OLE DB for OLAP, while the query lan -

guage used is MDX (multi-di men sional ex pres sions).


SAS®9

Figure 5: Screenshot of Enterprise Guide®

This has im por tant con se quences. Be cause SAS’ OLAP fa cil i ties are stan dards-

based, this means that you can use SAS En ter prise Guide with a third party OLAP

server, if you pre fer. Al ter na tively, you can also use third party front-end tools in con -

junc tion with SAS OLAP Server.

Other fa cil i ties within the prod uct in clude a cube-build ing tool called SAS® OLAP

Cube Stu dio, which works closely in con junc tion with SAS ETL Stu dio (see later) so

that can you can build cubes di rectly from cleansed data. The prod uct sup ports time

di men sions, rag ged and un bal anced hi er ar chies, and par al lel drill hi er ar chies that al -

low you to ana lyse along dif fer ent drill paths within a single dimension.

SAS® Information Delivery Portal

This is a fairly stan dard por tal that acts as a de liv ery mech a nism for us ers of all sorts

of out put. This may in clude the re ports, graphics, and so forth that are pro duced

from the front-end prod ucts just dis cussed; but it can also in clude dash boards, bal -

anced score cards and de tails de rived from other SAS prod ucts, as well as in for ma tion

from other sources. In cluded fa cil i ties are a search en gine, nav i ga tor portlets that al -

low you to browse the re pos i tory (see be low) di rectly from within the por tal, role-

based se cu rity, no ti fi ca tion portlets that sur face alerts and can be used in con junc tion

with KPIs (key per for mance in di ca tors) to no tify rel e vant par ties when a KPI in a

dash board goes out of range, en cryp tion ca pa bil ity, sin gle sign-on, and a de vel op -

ment en vi ron ment for con struct ing portlets called SAS AppDev Stu dio™.

As one would ex pect, there are full personalisation and customisation ca pa bil i ties

and the por tal has al ready been inter na tion al ised with sup port for a num ber of dif fer -

ent lan guage ver sions, in clud ing Eng lish, Ger man, Ital ian, French, Span ish, Chinese

and Hebrew.

The SAS In for ma tion De liv ery Por tal uses a con ven tional portlet-based ap proach

and you can, of course, de liver re sults to a third party por tal if you pre fer, or you can

im ple ment the SAS por tal as a part of a wider en ter prise por tal environment.

SAS® ETLQ

In Fig ure 3, there are two ma jor ad di tional prod ucts that are shown as a part of the

SAS®9 ar chi tec ture: the SAS In for ma tion Map Stu dio and SAS ETL Stu dio. How -

ever, the for mer works in con junc tion with the SAS Metadata Re pos i tory and is dis -

cussed be low, while the lat ter is ac tu ally a part of a larger prod uct cat e gory in its own

right. SAS mar kets this as SAS ETLQ, where this is the com pany’s in te grated data in -

te gra tion plat form, con sist ing of ETL (ex tract, trans form and load), data pro fil ing

and data cleans ing.

SAS ETL Stu dio is a tem plate-based de vel op ment en vi ron ment that sup ports the de -

sign of data trans for ma tion and map ping pro cesses within the ETL en vi ron ment. It

is pack aged in two ways, ei ther as part of SAS En ter prise ETL Server, or SAS ETL

Server de pend ing upon the re quire ments and scale of the organisation concerned.

While you can use SAS ETL Stu dio in con junc tion with third party data qual ity tools,

the in te gra tion be tween these will ob vi ously not be as tight. For ex am ple, in SAS


SAS®9

ETL Stu dio there are built-in pro fil ing and cleans ing icons that you can drag and

drop onto your pal ette while de vel op ing trans for ma tion workflows; if you are us ing

third party prod ucts these will not be avail able and you will have to code such rou -

tines. Fur ther, us ing third party tools will im me di ately mean hav ing a sec ond

metadata re pos i tory and a third if pro fil ing and cleans ing are sourced from dif fer ent

sup pli ers. This will make data lin eage more com plex and in crease man age ment over -

heads. In ad di tion, there are sig nif i cant per for mance ad van tages to be gained from an

in te grated en vi ron ment. For ex am ple, SAS sim ply streams data to its cleans ing fa cil i -

ties as it is pro cessed; in non-in te grated en vi ron ments you typ i cally have to write the

data to a file, which is sub se quently read by the data cleans ing prod uct. For large files

this is a pro cess that can take a mat ter of hours and could severely impact on batch

windows and performance overload.

As one might ex pect, there are a sig nif i cant num ber of con nec tors pro vided by SAS

to sup port a va ri ety of data and other sources, in clud ing spe cial ised fa cil i ties for ex -

tract ing data from var i ous ap pli ca tion en vi ron ments and sup port for mes sage queu -

ing. It should be noted that these con nec tors are re used across the SAS®9 prod uct

set, thus the same fa cil i ties could be used in the SAS In for ma tion De liv ery Por tal for

ac cess ing data from an SAP R/3 sys tem, for ex am ple. Fur ther, these con nec tors can

be re-de ployed by any rel e vant prod uct in a live (fed er ated) en vi ron ment. Thus, for

ex am ple, one of the busi ness in tel li gence tools can use a mes sage queu ing con nec tor

to di rectly pass the re sults of a query to an other en vi ron ment via WebSphere MQ or a

sim i lar prod uct. There is also an ODBC bridge provided by SAS to support inte -

gration with other external environments.

Metadata Repository

The de vel op ment of this part of SAS®9 rep re sents a ma jor achieve ment. In the past,

dif fer ent SAS prod ucts had sep a rate re pos i to ries and, though they could talk to one

an other, this is no where near as con ve nient as shar ing a sin gle re pos i tory. The mul ti -

ple re pos i tory sce nario is the po si tion that most other busi ness in tel li gence vendors

are still in today.

Note that one con se quence of this ap proach is that you can use the var i ous tools dis -

cussed above against the re pos i tory for brows ing, search ing or other pur poses. For

ex am ple, you might want to mon i tor the num ber of er rors that were be ing de tected

by your data qual ity pro ce dures (as sum ing you are us ing the data qual ity in SAS ETL

Stu dio) to sup port qual ity as sur ance programmes de signed to re duce such er ror

rates. Or you could use them to see how pop u lar par tic u lar re ports were and which

were viewed most frequently.

The SAS Metadata Server, which pro vides re pos i tory ca pa bil i ties for SAS®9, is open

and sup ports the OMG’s (Ob ject Man age ment Group’s) Com mon Ware house

Metamodel (CWM) stan dard. In par tic u lar, it sup ports the use of XML for ex chang -

ing metadata with other en vi ron ments, and this is where the SASXML Map per co -

mes in, since it en ables in ter ro ga tion and brows ing of the re pos i tory by means of

XML, to gether with map ping ca pa bil i ties that enable interoperability.

Apart from CWM, SAS also has a part ner ship with Meta In te gra tion Tech nol ogy Inc

(MITI), which pro vides meta-bridges that are in te grated with SAS®9 to al low you to


SAS®9

ex change metadata that is stored in a pro pri etary for mat in var i ous ap pli ca tions and

third party environments.

The SAS Metadata Server, which stores both tech ni cal and busi ness metadata,

pro vides check-in and check-out, versioning, im pact anal y sis, ac cess con trol, and a

com plete au dit his tory of who has done what and when. There are also im port and

ex port wiz ards for oc ca sions when you want to im port or ex port metadata di rectly

into or out of the en vi ron ment with out go ing through SAS ETL Stu dio or via SAS

Information Map Studio.

Fi nally, the SAS en vi ron ment of fers an open API that can be ad dressed via a num ber

of en vi ron ments such as XML, Java and COM/DCOM. This is im por tant be cause it

en ables front-end ap pli ca tions to di rectly ad dress the SAS®9 en vi ron ment. For ex -

am ple, sup pose that you have stand ard ised on IBM as a busi ness de scrip tion of that

com pany, as op posed to In ter na tional Busi ness Ma chines. If an em ployee at IBM

phones into a call cen tre you want to en sure that the call cen tre re cords his or her em -

ployer as IBM. These sorts of stand ardi sa tion rules will nor mally be de ter mined us ing

the data qual ity soft ware in ETLQ and then stored for re use within the re pos i tory.

The Open API means that the call cen tre ap pli ca tion can ac cess this in for ma tion di -

rectly. Sim i larly, while we are not dis cuss ing the use of En ter prise Miner in this white

pa per, things like credit risk scor ing or fraud al go rithms that you can de velop us ing

En ter prise Miner can be stored and, again, ap pro pri ate front-end ap pli ca tions can ac -

cess these rou tines di rectly through the open API. Al ter na tively, these re sources can

be ex posed as Web ser vices and this mech a nism can be used for in te gra tion with the

front-end en vi ron ment as an al ter na tive to us ing an API. Note that stan dard names,

risk al go rithms and so forth are not stored in the Metadata Re pos i tory them selves,

but the Metadata Re pos i tory knows where they are held, thus pro vid ing a com mon

ad dress ing fa cil ity across the prod uct set.

Manageability

Clearly, much of the man age abil ity in SAS®9 is de rived from the fact that it is a sin gle

en vi ron ment. How ever, that is sup ported by the SAS Man age ment Con sole, which

acts as a sin gle point of con trol for the whole en vi ron ment through which all the dif -

fer ent lower level man ag ers run. These all do more or less what their names sug gests

and in clude the Metadata Man ager, which con trols all of the metadata serv ers (you

can have a fed er ated metadata en vi ron ment), their re pos i to ries, re source tem plates,

change man age ment and im port/ex port; the Server Man ager, which is used to de fine

and con fig ure SAS serv ers and con nec tions; and the User and Au tho ri za tion Man ag -

ers. In a multi-ma chine clus ter or grid en vi ron ment the SAS Metadata Server(s) act(s)

to bind these to gether and the SAS Man age ment Console acts as the window into the

Metadata Server(s)

Scalability, Resilience and Performance

The op er a tive word when it co mes to dis cuss ing the sort of scalability, and other fea -

tures that all large-scale sys tems re quire, is flex i bil ity. For ex am ple, SAS ETLQ does

not en force a strictly E, T and then L pro cess upon the user. If it makes more sense

from a per for mance per spec tive to do some trans for ma tions (join op er a tions say) on

the source sys tem be fore ex tract ing the data, then you can do that. Sim i larly, you


SAS®9

could load all the data onto the tar get and then trans form it: that is what we mean by

flex i bil ity.

An other as pect of flex i bil ity which we have al ready men tioned is the range of plat -

forms that are sup ported by SAS. In the busi ness in tel li gence world its sup port for

main frame en vi ron ments is a key differentiator. More over, it of fers spe cial ised serv -

ers for dif fer ent func tions. For ex am ple, the SAS® OLAP Server, which is multi-

threaded (as are all SAS serv ers), has been sig nif i cantly re-de signed in this re lease to

pro vide im proved per for mance. Other stan dard fea tures in clude load bal anc ing,

failover, in de pend ent par al lel ism, pipe line par al lel ism and so forth. Per haps most sig -

nif i cantly, in SAS®9 you can dis trib ute ei ther an ap pli ca tion or the plat form it self

across a grid or clus ter, so that you can make optimal use of existing resources.

In ad di tion to sup port ing main frame en vi ron ments, SAS also sup ports mixed en vi -

ron ments (an other differentiator) in which you can have both main frame and other

sys tems co-op er at ing with one an other. In this sort of en vi ron ment SAS uses a cost -

ing al go rithm that un der stands that main frame op er a tions are more costly than those

on other plat forms and it there fore load bal ances asym met ri cally, de pend ing on the

results of the algorithm.


SAS®9

ConclusionsThere are re ally two sets of points to con sider: how well does SAS®9, as a busi ness in -

tel li gence plat form, an swer the sorts of ques tions we posed at the be gin ning of this

pa per? And, how well it does it stack up to the com pe ti tion in an swer ing those ques -

tions? Af ter all, SAS might meet the cri te ria for the first but so might lots of other

ven dors, so the ini tial ques tion needs to be put in context.

First, then, how does SAS®9 com pare to the re quire ments iden ti fied?

Requirement SAS®9

1 Business Intelligence – integrated suite of user interfaces and tools that span the enterprise Yes

2 Corporate Governance – integrated metadata environment to provide data lineage Yes

3 Corporate Governance – control of Microsoft Excel environment No

4 Cost of Ownership – single vendor Yes

5 Cost of Ownership – improved manageability through single metadata environment Yes

6 Other Considerations – performance, scalability and resilience Yes

7 Other Considerations – interoperability Yes

As can be seen, SAS®9 ful fils all of our re quire ments for an en ter prise-class in te -

grated busi ness in tel li gence plat form with the ex cep tion that it does not pro vide con -

trol of the Microsoft Ex cel en vi ron ment, which is a fea ture that we would cer tainly

like to see the com pany in tro duce. In the mean time, the best we can sug gest is that

us ers make as much use of stored pro cesses as pos si ble when work ing within an Ex -

cel en vi ron ment, and limit the re-def i ni tion of data within Excel as much as is

feasible.

As far as its com pet i tive po si tion is con cerned, the fol low ing ta ble shows the cur rent

state of the mar ket against which SAS®9 has to be com pared. The num bers shown re -

late to the same re quire ments as in Table 1.

From Ta ble 2 it should be clear that, while we may have res er va tions about the ex -

ploi ta tion of Ex cel, in all other re spects SAS®9 is ei ther up to or ahead of the mar ket.

How ever, we should note the pro viso that we are not com par ing the in di vid ual fea -

tures of the SAS prod ucts here, only the gen eral en vi ron ment. There may well be in -

di vid ual fea tures of com pet i tive prod ucts that we would like when com pared to SAS

(and the re verse is also true, of course) but we are not con sid er ing the com pet i tive

landscape at this level of detail.

What we can say is that there is no other suite of prod ucts in the mar ket that has the

breadth of ca pa bil ity that SAS®9 can pro vide with the level of in te gra tion that un der -

pins it. Put that to gether with the scalability and other fea tures that the plat form pro -


SAS®9

Table 1: Does SAS compare favourably to requirements?

vides and we con cur with the com pany that SAS has pro duced an en ter prise-class

busi ness in tel li gence plat form. We would also agree that it is the first such prod uct in

this class and that this should give the com pany a sub stan tial ad van tage as it can now

move be yond its tra di tional high-end ana lyt ics strong hold to ad dress the gen eral-pur -

pose busi ness intelligence market for the first time.


SAS®9

How the market fares

1 Most vendors are struggling towards the position that SAS has reached. We know of only one other fully integrated set of products based on a

single platform but this has limitations with regard to its OLAP tool and, in any case, it is much narrower product set overall.

2 Most suppliers can provide this, even where separate metadata repositories are required by tracking the movement of metadata, though this is

obviously more complex.

3 A number of vendors can control the Excel environment or have developed their own Excel look-and-feel products. However, there remain a

substantial number of suppliers that cannot control Excel capability.

4 Nobody has as wide a range of business intelligence solutions as SAS.

5 Most other suppliers are trying to reach the same position as SAS. Many of them are years away from an integrated solution.

6 No other company in the business intelligence space can match SAS for across-the-board scalability.

7 SAS is comparable to a number of other companies in terms of interoperability and we do not regard this as a differentiator.

Table 2: SAS compared to the market

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