About 4GL Apps

Delivery, Enablement, & Support

Stop me if I go too fast!

Company Overview

• UK Ltd, 9 years
• SAS UK Subcontractor
• 7 developers - 5 JavaScript, 2 SAS

Focus: SAS Solutions

Products

• Data Controller for SAS® - for regulated industries
• Sasensei - quiz game with 5000 SAS geeks
• SASjs - DevOps Framework

Services

• Bootstrap complex SAS projects with our GIT centric approach
• Modernise AF/SCL or SAS/IntrNet Apps
• Migrate SAS 9 Web Apps to Viya

Challenges with Traditional SAS Project

• Scattered Artefacts > Hard to navigate - changes are lost
• Shared Environment > Edits affect everyone
• Single Server > Migration Management

The absence of a standardised framework makes for inconsistent project delivery and on-boarding struggles for new developers

SASjs Workflow

SASjs Projects

• Push to Any or Many > Server Agnostic
• Centralised Artefacts > Source Controlled
• Isolated Developer Environments > Move Fast and Break Things

Highly suitable where SAS Programming is involved
Needs additional work for graphical artefacts (VA, Flows etc)

Why Do SAS Developers It?

• Use preferred IDE > VS Code / Sublime / Vim
• Access to the terminal > Shell scripts, Python
• Access to local applications > GIT GUI / Doxygen

Why Do SAS Admins It?

• Nothing to install or provision on the SAS server
• No SSH nor special permissions needed anywhere
• Nothing to configure, except:
  • Optional: Access to the target folder
  • Optional: Client / Secret (Viya)
  • Optional: SAS 9 setting for encoded passwords

Why Do Project Leads It?

• Faster to on-board new developers
• Ability to work on multiple features in parallel
• Complete visibility of what is being developed

Actual Deployments

• Department of Work & Pensions (with SAS UK)
• Lloyds List Intelligence (with SAS Belgium)
• SKR Association (with SAS Sweden)

What is SASjs?

1. An Opinionated Approach - which led to the development of:
2. A Collection of Tools
   • @sasjs/cli - CI/CD and Automated Deployment
   • @sasjs/core - Macro library
   • @sasjs/vscode-extension - Battery Pack for VS Code

Pre Requisites

Required	Recommended	Recommended

To install the CLI: npm i -g @sasjs/cli

Core Features

• sasjs compile > Create self-contained Jobs, Services & Tests
• sasjs build > Prepare deployment pack (JSON / SAS Program)
• sasjs deploy > Send to the target location

Running SAS

• sasjs run > Execute arbitrary SAS code
• sasjs job execute > Run a Job
• sasjs flow execute > Run a collection of Jobs

Being a Responsible Developer

• sasjs test > Trigger one or more Tests
• sasjs lint > Check Code Quality / Best Practices
• sasjs doc > Doxygen Documentation (+ Lineage)

More commands at https://cli.sasjs.io

Compilation - Scaffolding Consistency

Compilation Components

Targets are compiled by reference to the dependencies listed in the Doxygen header.

• Artefacts: Jobs, Services, Tests
• Dependencies: Macros, Includes, Binary Files
• Optional Frontend - convert a web project into a streaming app.

SASjs Config File

Every SASjs Project has a sasjs/sasjsconfig.json file, for configuration of:

• Location of Artefacts (+ Dependencies & Init/Term programs)
• Macro Variables
• Target attributes / connection settings

SASjs Target

A location on a SAS server. Can be specific to individual developers, or shared location such as a release environment.

Core attributes:

• name > Alias for SASjs commands, eg: sasjs deploy -t dev3
• serverUrl > Protocol + Host + Port
• serverType > either SASVIYA, SAS9 or SASJS
• appLoc > Root deployment folder in SAS Drive or Metadata

Plus any target specific overrides - ie macro variables, artefact / dependency locations etc.

Demo

sasjs create mydemo --template jobs
sasjs lint
sasjs doc
sasjs auth
sasjs cbd
sasjs test

Resources

• https://sasjs.io/resources
• https://datacontroller.io
• https://github.com/sasjs
• https://cli.sasjs.io
• https://sasapps.io