The SAS HOT Editor

What is this?

A H54S-based HTML5 Web Application for the SAS® Intelligence Platorm™ that lets end users easily edit, create and upload designated SAS datasets using a familiar spreadsheet-like interface with built in front-end validation:

Who is it for?

SASHOT will be useful to anyone wanting to give members of their organisation the ability to view or edit centrally stored data in a controlled and secure manner, without the need for any extra traning or client-side deployment. It is designed to be a universal 'swiss-army knife' type app that can be easily customised by SAS programmers to provide locked down, user-dependent functionality.

Whether it's to quickly browse a SAS library, update a control table, submit manual adjustments (by pasting data in from their excel workbook?)... you get the idea. If you've ever had a colleague look off into middle distance and perform an impromptu soliloquy on the good old days of PROC FSEDIT, feel free to show them this app.

How does it work?

It uses the (excellent) Handsontable JavaScript library to provide spreadsheet-like editor functionality and the (excellent) SAS Stored Process Web Application to interact with the SAS Platform at the back end. The interaction between the two is managed by the boemska html5 data adapter for sas.

If you're a SAS programmer wanting to understand how the app works, start by looking at the programs in the sas/stp directory while consulting the H54S documentation.

What does it need?

Server

• Typically SAS 9.4 with SAS Integration Technologies and the STP Web App configured (ie. SAS Office Analytics). Earlier versions of SAS work fine but static content deployment is a bit more complicated than what is documented here.

Client

• A modern browser. Chrome or Firefox recommended. IE11 works ok.

Developer

• Standard dev tools such as git, npm and bower. Not needed if you just want to deploy/run the app. See below.

How do I get it?

To run the App as-is

If you don't need to modify the app much or can't install git/npm/bower easily, simply download the latest Release archive from the releases page.

For Development / Customisation

As with the h54s Angular Seed App, you need to have git, npm and bower installed. After that it's easy:

# Clone this project
git clone https://github.com/Boemska/sas-hot-editor.git

# Navigate to it
cd sas-hot-editor 

# Install the dependencies and build app and dist
npm install

How do I deploy it?

Deployment is simple on SAS 9.4, requiring no special permissions or service interruptions. Building and deploying the app involves:

• importing/registering the SAS content (by importing the included .spk)
• telling the STPs where the included H54S macros are located (by changing the Shared Prompt default value)
• configuring the Web App to point to the correct location in SAS metadata where content was imported (by editing dist/h54sconfig.json)
• deploying the Web App (by copying the dist directory to somewhere within Lev1/Web/WebServer/htdocs)

More detail on each step is provided below:

Deploy the SAS content

Deploy the Stored Processes

The SAS Metadata objects (6 Stored Processes and a Shared Prompt) are contained within a standard sas .spk package, under sas/spks/sashoteditor.spk. Import this package into a Metadata location of your choice.

Alternatively if you prefer to register the Stored Processes yourself, the SAS code for each can be found under sas/stps. The registered objects should all reside in one Metadata directory, and their names should mirror the names of the files, without the .sas extension.

With either method you should end up with a Metadata directory, the contents of which resemble something like this:

More info on the purpose of that h54slocation shared prompt in the next section.

Configure the H54S location

The Stored Processes need to source the macros defined in h54s.sas to function. Copy sas/includes/h54s.sas to a location accessible by your Stored Process Server and set the default value of the h54slocation shared prompt to the full path of the h54s.sas file:

• Right click h54slocation -> Properties -> Bottom left Edit Prompt -> 2nd tab Prompt Type and Values -> 2nd from bottom Default Value
• Change /pub/apps/core/h54s.sas to wherever you copied h54s.sas

This will enable the H54S macros are be sourced via the %include "&h54slocation."; statement present in each of the SAS programs.

Note: If you deployed your Stored Processes manually, you will need to pass the &h54slocation. var to your programs another way - ie. by setting the value in your STP Server autoexec, creating a h54slocation prompt for each of the Stored Processes, or creating it as a single Shared Prompt and attaching it to each of the 6 STPs.

The code is set up in this way for ease of deployment. If you're pushing this out to a couple of thousand users, consider storing / compiling / autocalling h54s.sas rather than having the code %included each time.

Deploy the Web App

Configure the Metadata location of deployed STPs

The H54S Adapter needs to know the Metadata location of the registered Stored Processes. This is configured by editing dist/h54sconfig.json. If you imported the .spk so that your STPs are located under /Shared Data/Apps/tableEditor, your dist/h54config.json file should look like this (note trailing slash):

{
  "metadataRoot": "/Shared Data/Apps/tableEditor/",
  "debug": false
}

This is the most basic configuration and should suit most common SAS installations. For more information on available H54S configuration parameters, and how to configure it when your SASLogon or SASStoredProcess URIs are customised, have a look at the H54S Javascript API Reference.

Deploy the Static Web App code to htdocs

SAS 9.4 comes with Pivotal Web Server (Apache 2.2.29) included. To deploy this Web app, copy the dist/ directory to a subdirectory within [SAS-Config]/[SAS-Lev]/Web/WebServer/htdocs. If, for example, you copied dist to htdocs/apps/sasEditor (ie. so that sasEditor dir contains h54sconfig.json and index.html), this would make the App accessible via the URL yourSasServer/apps/sasEditor/.

Test the app

As above, the app should now be accessible via http(s)://yourSasServer:7980/theDirectoryYouCopiedItToInHtdocs/, where yourSasServer and 7980 are the server and port number of your SAS Web Server. If you aren't already logged in to the SAS web apps, the app should ask you for your SAS username and password. This means the app was redirected to SASLogon correctly and is a good sign.

How do I customise it?

Deploy it to your Development environment. Look at how the dropdowns are passed to the client in startupService.sas and have a think about Metadata-bound libraries. Feel free to change some of the HTML. Have a play.

We're in the process of putting together a detailed Wiki. Watch this space.

Support

For simple stuff or feature ideas, raise an issue on GitHub and let's make it happen. For commercial support or custom development, drop us a line on info@boemskats.com.