SAS Institute SA has recently started the rollout of the latest version of its flagship enterprise knowledge and business intelligence system, which contains new products, thousands of enhancements, and a new information delivery architecture.
Version 8e of the SAS System delivers a number of key improvements to the SAS software, including refined user interfaces, enhanced development environments, a set of powerful new analytical components, and a more open, component-based architecture.
Franc Trivella, chief technology officer at SAS Institute SA, describes the latest version of the SAS System as the most important release of the software to date.
He points out that organisations are generating huge volumes of data as a result of the rise of new e-business applications such as customer relationship management and e-commerce. More than ever, use of business intelligence tools to create information from that data and facilitate sharing of knowledge right across the enterprise is critical to the organisation's competitiveness.
"This release fulfils the promise of a truly open infrastructure, which gives SAS the ability to manage growing volumes of data and the increasing number of end-users, while providing tight integration of the enterprise knowledge software with the transactional and database systems," says Trivella.
He adds that Version 8e of the SAS Software also provides the foundation on which enterprises can build SAS e-Intelligence solutions that help them to turn the trail of data every visitor to a Web sites leaves behind into business intelligence.
Trivella says the architecture of SAS Version 8e separates the storage, server, and client components, allowing customers the flexibility to choose the best option for each without having to worry about compatibility issues.
The new information delivery infrastructure includes intelligent storage supporting multiple terabytes of data, intelligent servers that allow component reuse and information publishing, and intelligent clients that extend information access and delivery to a broader base of end users.
This allows customers to maintain their investments in other data stores and software systems, while taking advantage of the computational power of the SAS software.
SAS Version 8e includes a new product, SAS Integration Technologies, which provides support for emerging industry-standard distributed object models such as COM/DCOM and CORBA, message-oriented middleware such IBM's MQSeries and Microsoft's MSMQ, and enterprise directories such as LDAP. This provides customers with an open IT infrastructure that allows client applications to hook into server-based SAS Software and eases enterprise application integration.
SAS Integration Technologies also includes a new publishing framework that automates the process of information distribution. This framework allows end-users to select which information they would like to have access to by subscribing to channels.
Through the new publishing framework, SAS applications can distribute data, reports, URLs, documents, spreadsheets, and other information to end-users, either through e-mail or through message queues. This new technology removes the burden of keeping track of which people and systems need to receive information from the people and processes responsible for information delivery. It also ensures that information consumers receive information as soon as it is available.
Trivella says that the Output Delivery System is one of the most eagerly received enhancements to the system. ODS gives users control over the format and appearance of SAS analytical results, providing a number of options for displaying information in visually appealing and easy-to-understand formats.
It supports an almost limitless number of output destinations, including the standard SAS output window, HTML, output data sets, Adobe Acrobat files (PDF), PostScript, PCL, and XML.
The ODS supports organisations that are looking to use intranets to deliver information to end-users. Version 8 simplifies the process of using the Web to deliver analytical results and decision support information to end-users, eliminating the need for extensive coding to create customised Web-based reports that reflect the look, feel and architecture of a Web browser.
Trivella says that the new application development environments and Web enhancements included in Version 8e reduce application and system implementation times by between 20% and 50%. SAS' application development environment has been reworked with a powerful new component-based programming environment that offers full support for a CGI/HTML and Java development environment for all styles of thin-client Web application development .
SAS Version 8e also provides customers with greater transparency and data access functionality that enhances the SAS System's data management capabilities. The SAS System now includes access engines for Baan, Teradata, and OLE DB as well as enhancements that allow transparent integration of data management systems and other external data sources with SAS solutions.
Improved user interfaces and simplified tasks give end-users quick and seamless access to SAS decision support servers. With new thin client interfaces, such as Enterprise Guide, Version 8e has made great strides in its user interfaces.
Users will also find a number of new analytical features in the software, including survey design procedures, new data visualisation features, a point-and-click interface for the design and analysis of experiments, a guided interface that provides easy access to many of SAS' statistical procedures, and a new graphical interface for matrix programming and exploratory graphics.
Share
