Introducing Analytics Pro Advanced Programming: The power of SAS on your desktop

This post was kindly contributed by SAS Users - go there to comment and to read the full post.

This article was co-authored by Deva Kumar and Ali Dixon.

The launch of SAS Analytics Pro Advanced Programming offers key statistical capabilities in a docker container. The product bundles selected executables from SAS Viya to create the container, which eases or streamlines the setup required for fixes and updates to the software.

Current and new users can use the platform for data management, advanced analytics, reporting and batch processing. It includes the products in SAS Analytics Pro, Base SAS, SAS Studio 5.2, SAS/STAT, SAS/GRAPH. Integration with Python is available and includes Proc Python and access to saspy from python clients (ex: JupyterLab). Analytics Pro Advanced Programming offers the addition of SAS/ETS, SAS/IML, SAS/OR and SAS/QC.

For the remainder of this post, a reference to “Analytics Pro” includes the features of both Analytics Pro and Analytics Pro Advanced Programming.

Easy as 1-2-3 OR Simple is Good

Analytics Pro is delivered as a Docker image. This makes it easy to deploy, use and maintain. The diagram below shows that it takes just 3 steps to begin programming with SAS on your workstation.

For a current Analytics Pro 9.x user, Analytics Pro is the next generation with all the goodness of Analytics Pro 9.x with many improvements from SAS Viya.

What is the same?

Users can run all of their existing programs with Analytics Pro. A few things like having a filename to a C: drive must change, but not the logic of the program. Users can run interactively using SAS Studio or run batch jobs.

Users can continue to program using the SAS Language consisting of DataStep, Procedures and Macros.

What is different?

Analytics Pro is “carved” out of SAS Viya so that it is familiar to current SAS 9.x users. In keeping with this philosophy, Analytics Pro does not include many of the advanced capabilities of SAS Viya.

The Cloud Analytic Server (CAS) is not included. However, Analytics Pro programs can connect to CAS.
To keep the size small, Analytics Pro does not include the latest version of SAS Studio or any of the other great visual products on SAS Viya.
Analytics Pro includes the database engines that are on SAS Viya. There are no additional charges for these.
Analytics Pro includes Proc Python from SAS Viya allowing users to include Python code as part of the SAS program.
Python programmers can use SASPy to access Analytics Pro from their Python code.
Updates are shipped monthly giving users the latest fixes and updates. This will include any new database drivers that are added to SAS Viya and other SAS Viya features like Proc Python.

What if users want to run it on the cloud?

One of the advantages of Analytics Pro is it will fit into the user’s cloud strategy. The container can be in docker on virtual machines – Linux or Windows. See this article for an example. The container can also be deployed on Kubernetes clusters. Users can use the platform that suits their needs.

View a demo of these new features and learn more on the SAS Viya Release Highlights Show.