Modernising Legacy SAS Applications

If I go too fast:

• stop me
• visit slides.sasjs.io
• book me to present to your team

Who We Are

• UK Company
• SAS Subcontractor
• Focus on SAS Solutions

Services

• Modernisation (AF/SCL + SAS/Intrnet)
• Migration (STP web apps to Viya)
• Manifestation
• Support

Projects

• 400 user AF/SCL modernisation, 8 months, Allianz UK
• AF/SCL Data Management system, 8 months, UK Gov Dept
• Demand Planning Tool, 3 months, Der Touristik (Germany)
• SOAP Interface to Viya, 3 weeks, SKR (Sweden)

Plus many more

Products

Data Controller for SAS®	SASensei	SASjs
Angular	React	Typescript

Plus SCL Transcoding Kit

AF/SCL Apps

AF + SCL
Catalog Centric
Manual Deployment

Web Apps

JS + SAS
GIT / DB Centric
Continuous Integration

Project Concerns #1

Topic	Suffering	Prognosis
Inertia	App worked fine for decades. Why change it?	Vastly superior UX and lower maintenance / upgrade costs
Resource Availability	We're all super busy and the developer quit in 1999.	Code review + carefully planned video interviews for minimal customer impact

Project Concerns #2

Topic	Suffering	Prognosis
Scope Uncertainty	The complexity will cost us and take	Phase 0 estimation + regular (functional) deliveries
House of Cards	Our data is sensitive, our infrastructure is brittle - systems access is difficult to obtain	Deliver offsite with sample data, deploy onsite to new environment

4GL Apps Project Approach

• PreSales
• Delivery
• Aftercare

4GL Apps Project Approach

PreSales

• Preparation (code/doc review, exploratory interviews)
• Initial Proposal (as is, to be, rough estimates)

Delivery

• Phase 0 (confirm estimates, scope, initial env setup + interface, fixed price)
• Phase 1-N (functional deliveries + docs + tests with each milestone)

4GL Apps Project Approach

Aftercare

• Testing & Warranty (X days over X months)
• Training
• Ongoing Support & Maintenance (IF preferred vendor)
  • https://sasapps.io/support

Documentation

Continuously delivered - NOT at the end of the project

• User Guide
• Admin Guide
• Developer Guide
• SAS Docs (SASjsDoc)
• JS Docs (TypeDoc)

End Result

A user-friendly, accessible, modern UI that can:

• run on both Viya and EBI
• be maintained by generic frontend / backend developers
• be maintained by the client, or any vendor (not just 4GL Apps)

Tools

• SASjs (DevOps for SAS) - Open Source
• Data Controller (controlled data ingestion)
  • Resulted in a 30% cost saving (~3 months) on DWP project
• SCL Transcoding Kit (re-use of SCL logic, where necessary)

SCL Kit

Functions

SCL Kit

Submit Blocks

SCL Kit

Object Methods

SCL Kit

Method Blocks

SCL Kit

After / Before

SAS/FSP

• FSBROWSE: View one record at a time
• FSEDIT: Edit one record at a time
• FSVIEW: View or edit a table of data

Much of the above functionality is available in Data Controller for SAS®. The remaining parts are fairly trivial to build as standalone web apps.

What is Data Controller?

• Controlled Data Capture
• Governance
• Exploration

Designed for Regulated Industries

Why use Data Controller?

• Eliminate entire Design/Dev/Test/Promote resource cost
• Ingest 'invisible' data into SAS (silos, EUCs)
• Automatic Data Quality at source
• Showcase Lineage (SAS9)

Data Controller Demo

• Editing (tables, format catalogs, datasets)
• SAS Logs
• Docs - https://docs.datacontroller.io
• Code - https://code.datacontroller.io

SASjs

The DevOps Framework for SAS Apps

Why use SASjs?

• Maintain velocity as complexity increases
• Faster, higher quality iterations
• Rapid on-boarding

What is SASjs?

An Opinionated Approach to SAS Solution Development

• Modular vs Monolithic
• Local vs Remote Development
• IDE vs GUI

Enables continuous deployment and test-driven, GIT-native development

SASjs Workflow

SASjs Tools

• @sasjs/cli - automated deployments (CI/CD), docs and tests

• @sasjs/vscode-extension - Battery Pack for VS Code

• @sasjs/adapter - connectivity between client & SAS

• @sasjs/core - '00s of macros for AppDev

• @sasjs/lint - quality check your SAS code

• @sasjs/server - build apps on Base SAS

• SASjs Seed Apps

SASjs Stats

• ~ 55k downloads
• ~ 20 contributors
• 35 Repositories

SASjs Core

• ~250 macros for application development
• Documentation + Tests
• Base SAS, Viya, Metadata, SASjs Server, FCMP, LUA

https://core.sasjs.io

SASjs Server - Use Cases for Viya Apps

• Portal for secure / organised frontend deployment
• Create mocked Stored Programs in JS, Python or R
  • Build frontend / run pipelines, where SAS unavailable
• Build on Base SAS / Deploy to Viya

https://server.sasjs.io

SASjs Adapter

Authentication & Communication

• Docs: https://adapter.sasjs.io
• Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwGptgvSqSw&t=14s

SASjs VS Code Extension

FOSS - VS Codium and Theia support. Key Features:

• Code Execution in all flavours of SAS
• Code Documentation (sasjs doc)
• Directory Synchronisation (sasjs fs sync)
• Linting and Formatting (sasjs lint)

sasjs doc

• Doc-Site from SAS Headers
• DoxyConfig Manager
• Lineage

Both CLI and VS Code Extension

Demo: xieliaing and jobs (for lineage)

sasjs lint

• Configurable severity level (ERROR / WARNING)
• Use in GIT HOOK or pipeline
• 16 rules / settings and counting

Both CLI and VS Code Extension

Demo: jobs

SASjs CLI - Execution

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

Requires authentication - let's look at deployment first

sasjs cbd (compile, build, deploy)

• Run the same project on different server types
• Eliminate need for physical directories (SASAUTOS)
• Package frontend as streaming app

Demo - Mario, React

SASjs Primary Artefacts

Services & Tests are compiled with %webout() macros, for generating JSON in SASjs format. See also: https://cli.sasjs.io/artefacts/

SASjs Secondary Artefacts

These items are bundled into each Primary Artefact when listed in the program header:

• SAS Macros - one macro per file, lowercase filenames
• SAS Includes - sas snippets, fcmp, lua, datalines, ddl etc
• Binary Files - excel, pdf, images, mp3, mp4, zip
• initProgram - executes before the Job / Service / Test
• termProgram - executes after the Job / Service / Test

SASjs Config File

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

• Primary / Secondary Artefact folders
• Macro Variables
• Target attributes / connection settings

SASjs Target

A location on a SAS server

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

sasjs cbd Syntax

• sasjs compile: Self-contained Jobs, Services, Tests
• sasjs build: Deployment pack (JSON / SAS Program)
• sasjs deploy: Send to target

Compile/Build/Deploy project to myTarget: sasjs cbd -t mytarget

Running Tests

sasjs test Syntax

Execute all tests (default target): sasjs test

Execute tests in "macros" folder: sasjs test /macros/

Prevent pipeline fail: sasjs test --ignoreFail

Execute all tests starting with "mv_" and save the output in 'myresults' folder

sasjs test mv_ --outDirectory /somedir/myresults

Resources

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

AF/SCL Resources

• SAS Apps Blog Post
• Easy AF article
• UK SAS Forum presentation
• RawSAS post
• Youtube video

Contact

https://4gl.io/cal
https://4gl.io/chat
https://4gl.io/social
https://www.linkedin.com/in/allanbowe