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Using multiple server contexts in SAS Visual Analytics

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By Topics | SAS Administrators

As a technical consultant for SAS, I have the privilege of meeting with SAS customers, learning more about how they use our software, and then helping them solve their problems. Recently, a client of mine was having trouble finding a way to implement the use of multiple application servers in SAS Visual Analytics 7.3 based on what business unit a user is a part of. Guessing that some of our SAS Visual Analytics Administrators may have the same question, I thought I’d share how we solved his problem.

The outline below is the order of operations of how a server context is selected. The example provided in the screenshots is how you would control access so that user requests will only be sent through the appropriate business unit server.

Preliminary Requirements

  • The Server is registered with the job execution service.
  • The Server is visible to the requesting user.

Assuming that all servers are registered with the job execution service the following steps are how an application server would be selected:

Step 1: The server associated with the target LASR library will be used. If the server is not visible to the user, proceed to step 2.

Figure 1: In this example the server context associated with the target library is SASApp which the user is denied access to in the server context permissions

Step 2: The suite-level default server defined in the SAS Visual Analytics configuration properties at “va.defaultWorkspaceServer” will be used. If the server is not visible to the user, proceed to step 3.

Figure 2: In this example the configuration property is also set to SASApp which the user is denied access to in the server context permissions

Step 3: Lastly, use any server that is registered with the job execution service and visible to the requesting user.

Figure 3: In this example the BU server context would end up being chosen because it is the only context that the user has permission to access

Some additional Info to Keep in Mind

  • The preferences in the administrator and data builder tabs allow the forced used of a specific server by opting out of automatic selection. These preferences can be separately set and one does not affect the other.
  • In SAS Visual Analytics Explorer, the pooled workspace server is used to populate the available data to import field, and the workspace server is used to perform the actual importing.
Figure 4: The pooled workspace server is denied access so the import data area will not be populated

I hope you found this blog helpful. Please feel free to leave a question or comment below.

Tags SAS Administrators SAS Consulting SAS Visual Analytics
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About Author

Zachary Jones

Associate Technical Consultant

Zachary Jones is an Associate Technical Consultant who has had extensive training in Base SAS, SAS platform administration and installation, DI Studio, Visual Analytics, and integration of SAS software with Hadoop. His primary focus is on the security and architecture of the SAS platform, assisting client SAS administrators. In addition, he also works cross-team on data management projects.

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