SAS Business Intelligence Tools Overview

SAS Enterprise Business Intelligence (BI) is a suite of applications so as to allows you to prepare and display data.  Here is a quick impression to help you learn the SAS BI product names and purposes.

A)Prepare Data

Your data may be in a relational database (Oracle, Teradata, MySQL, etc).  The data is then positioned in OLAP cubes, information maps, or in some cases a SAS dataset so it can be viewed in the BI toolset.  Some users create their extract transform load (ETL) process in SAS Data Integration (DI) Studio, which is another SAS product.

SAS OLAP Cube Studio

Build OLAP cubes, which are based on MDX code.  OLAP cubes agree to summarization of huge datasets so users can speedily view and drill-down to desired information. This post contains an overview of building a cube in SAS OLAP Studio.

SAS Information Map Studio

Build information maps from DBMS (Oracle, Teradata, and DB2), SAS datasets and OLAP cubes. Information maps permit you to join data, rename variables, and set the data into business responsive view.

B)Display and Use Data

Once your data is arranged it can be accessed in various ways.

SAS Web Report Studio

Generate reports from OLAP Cubes, Info Maps, or SAS datasets.  Simple, easy to use interface that allows end-users to rapidly review reports and drill-down to extra reports.

SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office

In MS Excel – Create reports from OLAP Cubes, information maps, or SAS datasets.  Mix SAS data among the data from Excel spreadsheets.

In MS Office/PowerPoint – create reports from cubes, information maps, or datasets.  Not as much give as with MS Excel, but you can easily generate report that you can share with other applications.

Possible to generate data in MS Excel that you can save to the server and then use in other BI Tools.  This would be an alternative for smaller datasets that are updated infrequently and not centrally stored, for instance, a department organization structure.

SAS BI Dashboard

Use the summarized data to create dials, maps, and even moving indicators

SAS Information Delivery Portal

merge all your Web Report Studio reporting, stored processes, and publication channels, and even external web sites in one location.  The portal allows a jumping off point for the 

C)Helpers

SAS Enterprise Guide

Connect to SAS datasets, RDBMS, and even Excel spreadsheets. Create stored processes to use and display data.

Create reports and more from OLAP Cubes, Info Maps, or SAS datasets.

Also generate reports that can be shared as a stored process for the other SAS tools.

SAS Prompt Framework

Used with stored processes and with SAS Enterprise Guide.  Prompts allow you to prompt or ask questions of the users and revisit data based on the choices.

SAS Stored Processes

Write SAS programs that can move data around, create reports, or just ensure prompts are available in information maps.  The uses are endless.

Administration

SAS Management Console Allows you to administer the system and organize data access