SAS Global Forum has always been a chance for developers and
managers at SAS to shine and this year in Las Vegas was no
exception. There are a couple of trends and development
direction that I found interesting on the demo floor in Caesar's Palace. The entire BI
platform remain relatively unchanged on the server and middle tier
level, but many of the clients is going through a dramatic
change. Rather than implementing the Java based PC client,
SAS is moving towards a thin client Flash based user interface
that will be delivered completely within the browser. There
will be a transition as these new clients gets introduced.
The interactivity of the flash player on the browser provides a
rich user experience but there are is a huge set of legacy code so I think
SAS will initially straddle between Adobe Flash and a PC desktop application
developed in Java.
I am glad to see that SAS is also continuing to expand on
foundation SAS with enhancing existing PROC such as PROC TEMPLATE
and ODS while creating new PROCs such as PROC XSL. This
allows for greater interoperability with industry standard XML and
CSS. There is also a push for enhanced visualization such as
in SAS/GRAPH while also introducing new Flash based visual
exploration tools.
I always learn new things when talking to the talented crew at
SAS. I was privileged to interview a few members at the
conference and will share with you some of these videos via You Tube.
Nascif
Neto SAS Visualization SASGF11 This is a new product
from SAS which provides data exploration and visualization similar
to JMP but it is delivered completely through a thin client on a
web browser.
Kevin
Smith ODS SASGF11 ODS continues to mature as it supports industry standard
CSS which provide for a powerful way of controlling how fonts
and colors of reports will be displayed.
Diane
Olson PROC XSL SASGF11 The supports for XSL allows SAS to apply powerful XML
transformation directly within SAS without having to issue a
system command to a third party tool.
Himesh
Patel SASGF11 SAS/Graph and its engine is being enhance to handle all the new clients ranging from Flash based graphics on a browser to iOS graphics on an iPad.
