SAS hot fixes and the importance of staying on top of them
As an entity that has dominated the analytics space for many years, a big part of SAS’ success has come directly as a result of the organisation’s attention to detail and constant focus on improving the platform. Over the years, SAS has successfully managed to address user concerns and issues, in addition to constantly pushing out updates to their respective software with timely updates known as SAS Hot Fixes.
These fixes, as any experienced SAS user would tell you, are a big reason why SAS continues to dominate and set itself apart from the burgeoning number of competitors in the analytics platform market and space.
SAS users who’ve been a part of the ecosystem for some time most likely already understand the value of SAS hot fixes. However, if you’re a more novice user who only recently joined the SAS space, you’re probably wondering what the fuss is all about. After all, aren’t SAS hot fixes just regular old updates that you can choose to ignore like you do with all your other software?
Absolutely not! While it is true that SAS hot fixes are, for all purposes and intent, updates to the SAS software environment, they cannot and should not be ignored in the way you might with updates for other software you use. In the following sections, we run through three specific reasons as to why it’s important to stay on top of SAS hot fixes.
SAS hot fixes directly address customer/user-reported problems
At the heart of SAS hot fixes is SAS’ commitment to addressing any and all of the challenges its customers face during their use of any SAS application. No matter how minor, or severe, a particular challenge may be, SAS hot fixes are issued regularly by the SAS Institute to address them.
For example, on a performance-related fix, a recent SAS hot fix addressed a user-reported issue that flagged platform performance being affected when setting up multiple OS scheduler jobs caused the operating system to use a large number of resources.
SAS hot fixes also address less severe issues that pop up from time to time. For example, a recent fix addressed an issue where the date-and-time range was displayed incorrectly in SAS® Customer Intelligence Studio.
No matter how severe a customer-reported issue may be, most SAS hot fixes are built and regularly issued to address them.
Deliver security-related updates
During this day and age, as more users are becoming increasingly dependent on data, the risks of data breaches have also skyrocketed. Every single day, concerns about data security and integrity are becoming core concerns of users – service providers that fail to assure a beyond an acceptable level of security will undoubtedly fall behind. SAS isn’t one of these organisations and a lot of that has to do with the SAS hot fixes it is constantly releasing.
If you’re not too fussed about staying up-to-date in terms of features, then, at the very least, security should be a core priority – especially if you handle vast volumes of data. SAS hot fixes regularly address frequently arising concerns about user information security. For example, one of the most recent SAS hot fixes addressed a concern where the SAS 9.4 Deployment Backup and Recovery tool printed SAS encoded password values in the backupserver.log file – raising concerns about data security and integrity.
Throughout the course of a SAS user’s interaction with SAS applications, you can expect to see frequent and regular updates being released – focused predominantly on security-related matters.
SAS hot fixes are constantly being released
When it comes to any software and/or analytics platform, constant improvement is vital to making sure data and insights are leveraged the right way. If you’re still questioning the merits and value of staying on top of SAS hot fixes, one important thing to keep in mind is that SAS hot fixes are constantly being made available. Every week, at least a couple of hot fixes are released to address specific issues – a quick review of the SAS communities page dedicated to SAS hot fixes would attest to this.
If staying ahead or, at the very least, on par with your competition when it comes to your data and analytics is a priority for you, making sure you’re constantly staying on top of regularly released SAS hot fixes is vital.
Our FREE SAS Hot Fix Analysis Service
If you’d like to constantly be aware of the SAS hot fixes that are available to your very own SAS environment, check out our FREE SAS hot fix analysis service. All our clients and many SAS users regularly leverage it to make sure their environment is up-to-date and running smoothly.
If you would like to know more about our SAS services, our company and our work with SAS, in addition to how you can leverage our expertise, feel free to reach out to us, or stay tuned to this feed.
