Jupyter with SAS Analytics Pro (cloud-native)
The new containerised version of SAS Analytics Pro from the SAS Institute opens up a world of possibilities for leveraging third-party technologies to enhance what is already a pretty powerful Data and Analytics platform.
One of these technologies that has really taken off and helped Data Scientists take advantage of a unified programming experience regardless of the language used is Project Jupyter. A core feature of Project Jupyter is known as a Notebook, and this is explained on the Jupyter site as “…an open-source web application that allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations and narrative text“. This not only makes it an easy, pleasant experience to work in but also facilitates the ability to present complex processes in a nice visual manner to non-programmers – kind of like reading through a notebook 🙂
Jupyter can also be used for SAS programming, and as part of our SAS Analytics Pro Launcher (available at https://github.com/Selerity/sas-analytics-pro/releases) you can enable this functionality with a simple change to the settings file!
Enabling JupyterLab in the Selerity Launcher for SAS Analytics Pro
If you have followed our previous post, Cloud-native SAS Analytics Pro – for your Desktop!, you will have a functioning SAS Analytics Pro container environment that leverages our custom Launcher (available on GitHub).
To enable Jupyter in your environment, open up the apro.settings file in your $deploy directory (the location where you unzipped the Selerity Launcher code) and set JUPYTERLAB to true.
# Enable Jupyter Lab? JUPYTERLAB=true
Stop your SAS Analytics Pro container if it is currently running with the following command:
docker stop sas-analytics-pro
Now start your environment back up by running the launchapro script again. When you launch your environment with JUPYTERLAB=true the following things happen behind the scenes (all transparent to the user):
- A virtual Python 3.9 environment is created in
/python(thepythondirectory in the repository) - The bits-and-pieces required to run JupyterLab and Jupyter Notebooks are installed to
/python - The SAS Kernel for Jupyter is installed to
/pythonand configured to use SAS in your SAS Analytics Pro container - Jupyter Lab is started up after SAS Studio is started
Depending on the speed of your internet connection it could take up to 15 minutes for all this to happen, but as long as you don’t delete the python directory all subsequent startups should be just as quick as before. This is what the startup process looks like with JupyterLab enabled:
############################################# # SAS Analytics Pro Personal Launcher # #-------------------------------------------# # S = SAS Studio has started # # J = Jupyter Lab has started # ############################################# .....S..J Password=aS7yiXxtA0 To stop your SAS Analytics Pro instance, use "docker stop sas-analytics-pro"
Using Jupyter
Open your browser to http://localhost:8888 and enter your generated password. You will then be presented with the JupyterLab main interface:
You can click on the SAS icons in the Launcher to create a new Notebook using the SAS Kernel, and then start writing your SAS code. Click the play button to submit your code:
Hosted Option
If you would prefer to just login-and-start-using Jupyter with SAS Analytics Pro, our Selerity Analytics Desktop offering provides SAS Analytics Pro as-a-service (including Jupyter), which can also be integrated into your existing IT infrastructure if required. This allows you to leverage you existing security, login credentials and code assets without needing to maintain your own SAS infrastructure. Contact us if you would like to learn more!
Cloud-native SAS Analytics Pro – for your Desktop!
In August 2021 SAS released a cloud-native version of SAS Analytics Pro. This release is based on the SAS Viya Platform and provides the full features of Base SAS, SAS/STAT and SAS/GRAPH via SAS Studio – a browser-based interface that users of recent SAS 9.4 and SAS Viya server environments will be familiar with.
The cloud-native version also adds the full SAS Viya set of SAS/ACCESS products, giving you access to many data sources!
Containerisation
This new release of SAS Analytics Pro leverages container technology, which means that the concept of installing your software is no longer just a matter of running “setup.exe”. The benefits of containerisation are many and include:
- Ability to run on Windows, Mac and Linux
- A consistent environment – e.g. your install is not going to be different from your colleague’s
- Ease of updates – SAS regularly update and patch their software. Previously this meant finding, downloading and installing those updates. Now you just have to “point” to the release of SAS (including updates) you want to use
- Portability – if you get a new PC (or move from PC to Mac) you just need to copy your config across
Deploying cloud-native SAS Analytics Pro
SAS provide a comprehensive set of instructions to get up and running which involve:
- Installing Docker (the software used to run containers)
- Logging into my.sas.com to get your license and certificate files
- Creating a script to startup your SAS Analytics Pro environment
On the surface, this seems pretty straightforward, but in case users feel a bit hesitant or unsure (especially when it comes to creating a launch script) we have created a “launcher” process to help you out. Our process mirrors the official SAS process but we provide the script, along with a simple way to tweak the features you want to add.
SAS Analytics Pro Launcher from Selerity
The first step is to download and install Docker from https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop.
Next, navigate to our GitHub repository and download the source code of our launcher that matches the SAS Analytics Pro version you want to use: https://github.com/Selerity/sas-analytics-pro/releases
Extract the ZIP file to a location on your machine, e.g. C:\SAS. The final directory (referred to as the $deploy directory) will be a subdirectory of this location created as a result of the unzipping, e.g. C:\SAS\sas-analytics-pro-2021.1.4.
Now log into my.sas.com and go to the “My Orders” section. In here, expand your SAS Analytics Pro Order and then click both the Download Certificates and Download License Only links. Save the file that each link provides to the directory created when you extracted the ZIP file, e.g. C:\SAS\sas-analytics-pro-2021.1.4
Finally, open a PowerShell (or Terminal on Linux/Mac) prompt, “cd” into the $deploy directory (created when you extracted the ZIP file) and then run launchapro.ps1 (or launchapro.sh on Linux/Mac)
After a minute or so you see a message letting you know that SAS Analytics Pro is up and running!
You can now open your browser and log into SAS Studio at http://localhost:81 using the same username you logged into Windows with along with the generated password that is displayed.
Customisation
There are many ways that this SAS Analytics Pro environment can be tailored/customised and we have provided some of the key options available within the apro.settings file that comes with our launcher. This file contains comments explaining each option, which we also document in the CONFIGURATION.md file.
Hosted Option
If you would prefer to just login-and-start-using SAS Analytics Pro, our Selerity Analytics Desktop offering provides SAS Analytics Pro as-a-service, which can also be integrated into your existing IT infrastructure if required. This allows you to leverage you existing security, login credentials and code assets without needing to maintain your own SAS infrastructure. Contact us if you would like to learn more!
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