Overview of the SAS Information Delivery Portal - SAS BI

SAS Information Delivery Portal

The sas information delivery portal provides an interface to access enterprise data, applications, and information.

The SAS Information Delivery Portal

• is built on top of SAS BI Architecture
• provides a single point of entry
• provides a Portal API for application development.

Using a centralized search tool, you can search for information from across the enterprise that is appropriate for your role in the organization.
The SAS Information Delivery Portal has many features, including the following:
1. The portal’s personalization features, which enable you to organize your portal desktop so that it contains only the information you need, in the format that makes the most sense to you.
2. The ability to subscribe to publication channels that deliver continually updated information to your desktop.
3. A secure environment for sharing information with other users.

The Information Delivery Portal uses pages and portlets to organize information.
1. A page is a Web page in the SAS Information Delivery Portal that contains portlets. Each page is represented by a tab in the portal’s navigation bar.
2. Portlets are the rectangular components of a portal page and are used to organize content.You can create, add, edit, rearrange, and remove pages in your personal portal. Pages can be shared either publicly or with a group of users.

A page can contain any number of portlets.

Content Types

Some of the main content types that can be added to portlets are

• links
• SAS Information Maps
• SAS Reports
• Stored Processes
• Alerts.

Content Types– Links

Links are content that are accessible using a universal resource locator (URL).

Content Types – SAS Information Maps

SAS Information Maps are user-friendly metadata definitions of physical data sources that enable business users to query a data warehouse to meet specific business needs.

Content Types – SAS Reports

SAS Reports are reports that have been stored in the SAS Report Model format.

Content Types– Stored Processes

Stored Processes are SAS programs that are stored in a central location and can be executed from the portal, creating reports that include the most current data.

Content Types – Alerts

An alert is an automatic notification of an electronic event. Alerts are displayed in the Alerts Portlet on one of your personal portal pages. Alerts can be used to notify you that a stored process has finished executing in the background and that the results are ready to view.

Stored processes that run in the background display the message Stored Process/ submitted for background processing when you execute them. This message means that you can continue working on other tasks while processing continues in the background. When the stored process finishes executing, a notice appears in your Alerts portlet. You can then click the alert message to see the results of the stored process.
In order for stored processes to execute in background, the portal must be installed with WebDAV support.

Other Content Types

What Is WebDav?

>>WebDAV is a set of extensions to HTTP, the HyperText Transfer Protocol, to allow remote collaborative authoring.
>>HTTP does a very good job of letting users browse content that is already published on the Web, but it is not very good at allowing users to post their own content.
>>WebDAV makes the Web writable as well as readable, in a standard, interoperable, way.
>>With just HTTP, there is no standard way to move a file, to lock or unlock it, or to add metadata or properties to the file. WebDAV standardizes all those functions.

Xythos– WebDav

Xythos

• is a secure WebDav server
• uses a relational database
• is not required for the SAS Information Delivery Portal, but some important features are not supported if Xythos is not part of the installation.

The Xythos WebFile Server (WFS) is a scalable, Internet-based file management solution, that allows users to securely store, modify, and share files from any Web-enabled device. Additionally, WFS is a full-featured WebDAV (level 2) server, providing users with file management functionality via any WebDAV-enabled client application. Using WebDAV and other Web standards, WFS helps enterprise customers find and share information from any Internet location while improving file system security and reducing the load on e-mail systems.

Content Classification

The content contained within the pages and portlets can be classified as one of the following:

• Public
• Group
• Personal.

Public Content Classification

Public content is content that has been shared with the portal’s Public group so that all portal users can access it. You can share content with the Public group and then edit and delete that content only if you are designated either as a content administrator for the public group or as a portal administrator.

Group Content Classification

Group content is content that has been shared with a group of portal users so that all users in the group can access it. You can share content with a group and then edit and delete that content only if you are designated either as a content administrator for the target group or as a portal administrator.

Personal Content Classification

>>Personal content is content that you created. If you have the appropriate level of authorization, then you can create pages, collection portlets, WebDAV navigator portlets, and links.
>>After you create these items, you can access them from the portal, edit them, remove them from your personal portal, use the Search tool to find them, or delete them permanently. Other portal users cannot access your personal content.
>>Depending on which software your organization has installed, the features that are listed above might be available only to users who are authorized as content administrators.

Interaction with SAS Application Servers

The SAS Information Delivery Portal can potentially use any or all of the following application servers: