SAS Institute Announces Linux Port Of SAS Software

stoney27 wrote to tell us about another big -- no, make that huge name porting their product to Linux. This time, it's SAS, porting their SAS data-warehousing and management software to Linux. In a world filled with FUD and innuendo, it's refreshing to hear SAS research vice president Bob Moran explain the move by saying "[m]any IT managers are attracted to the reliability and ease-of-use of Linux." Given their market, it's almost predictable that the first release is for Red Hat specifically, but this release says they intend to support all major distros.

Comments

Re:Will This Include Their C Compiler?

[KMSelf]

As I read the announcement, the port was for "the SAS System". Presumably this includes all system components.

What I understand of the SAS architecture is that it is largely platform independent, with the dependent stuff largely isolated into a (small?) number of modules. Probably less than 10% of the codebase. Meaning that you get a lot of portability bang for your programming buck.

The SAS C Compiler is what SI themselves developed to build SAS itself. So it was probably one of the earlier technical ports to the Linux platform. Moreover, it's been generally known for a couple of years that SI have been running a compile farm based on FreeBSD, particularly for their Mainframe products. Smoke that.

My guess is that SAS/Toolkit (the developers library) will be availble for Linux -- at a price. C'est la vie.

What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?

SAS4Linux

[KMSelf]

SAS's announcement is really great news for Linux, and it's something that users had been requesting for years, going back to a request by Christa Keil in 1993. There is no single solution providing the depth and breadth of data analysis and processing capabilities as SAS. I spent seven years as a SAS developer for clients in healthcare, banking, policy research, finance, biotech, and pharmaceutical sectors.

Two years ago I launched the SAS4Linux website and mailing list to focus the campaign. While it did generate interest from users, and responses from SAS Institute, I tend to think SI arrived at its own conclusions in deciding to market the port.

As others have noted, there is a bit of "too little, too late" from a number of folks as well. I now count myself as a former (recovering?) SAS programmer. I've been sufficiently infected with free software concepts to feel that there are several things about SAS which could be improved. In fact, many of them have been, though they are approached in a number of different, and distinct, open source projects.

The obvious next step is to provide some duct tape and wrapping around these tools to provide similar functionality (though not run-alike compatibility) to SAS. Stay tuned ;-)

What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?

SAS a as a scripting language

[KMSelf]

Interesting observation. I guess in a way SAS is something of a Perl equivalent for the mainframe -- general, high-level, all-purpose, interpreted tool. Comparatively it's relatively inexpensive (though by no means cheap), as well.

There are other MVS scripting tools though -- JCL has certain capabilities. REXX is also there, though I believe it's a relative newcomer. SAS's advantage is that it eats many common MVS file formats with relative ease. The same file-based inter-process communication method is used in both SAS programs and MVS jobs. Given that many MVS processes are heavily task, batch, and data oriented, it's a reasonably good fit.

The main differences on Unix are that there is much more system interactivity -- jobs can be interactive or trigger interactive events -- and interprocess communication often occurs as a data pipe rather than a disk file. A data step or SQL view approximates the latter. Pipelines save scads of disk I/O, and are a really cool feature. If an entire set of processes can be pipelined (data streamed from beginning to end), processing can be much faster than if a file or dataset has to be generated and read at each stage.

Unix is script-tool rich -- shells, sed, awk, Perl, Python, Tk,.... Yes. While some scripting tasks could be handled by SAS, you'd in general try to avoid doing this.

What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?

A new rebirth

[N8F8]

I won't comment on wether I consider SAS useful anymore, but there is a lot of dormant user experience out in the job market. Within our company SAS is quickly dying. Even two years ago almost all of our inhouse homgrown mission critical apps were programmed in SAS. There are many experienced SAS programmers within our company but a scant few are willing to admit it. With the more recent trends toward integrated applications with dumbed down GUI frontends the trend is clear. SAS is dying. Long live SAP.

Maybe this will breathe some new life into SAS.

The last piece falls in place

[JeffL]

This is truthfully the last piece of software that I need which did not run under Linux. SAS has been the only thing that has kept other Unices in my data center for the last two years. This will make my life so much easier, as I will be able to work on my data and write papers from beginning to end with only my laptop and an occasional Internet connection (for Medline, etc.).

I know I will have to wait a while until it is available, but this completely changes my long term planning for future hardware purchases.

Initiative..

[EraseMe]

SAS Institute already delivers solutions that run on all the major operating-system platforms, including the leading versions of UNIX (Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and Tru64, with support for Project Monterey planned), as well as Windows 2000, Windows NT and mainframe operating systems.

This company obviously has a thorough commitment to providing Unix solutions, and aren't stepping into the market with no grasp on the Unix ideals and concepts. Kudos for porting their product over to Linux!

EraseMe

Re:What's a "major distro"?

[Bad Mojo]

This is not a dumb question. I answer this all the time where I work. I encourage everyone who considers themselves to be a Linux Advocate to bone up on your distribution skills. Learn about each distro and what sets it apart and what makes it the same.

Essentially, where I work, we are being told to test software on 4 different distros. We think it would be easier to just test on one distro and have them tell us what minimum kernel, etc we need to make the app work. But marketing wants to be sure it'll work on RedHat and Suse. They don't know that under the hood, they use the same code (essentially). They also don't want to put technical minimum rquirements on the box (it seems) because it's easier to just say "For use with RedHat 5.2" or similar. It's very hard to get people to understand why a distro isn't a flavor (like normal UNIX), especially if they are not technical at all.


Bad Mojo

Will This Include Their C Compiler?

[g1dlc]

The press release isn't specific about the software products to be released. Can anyone comment about this?

The SAS C Compiler is used quite extensively in the IBM mainframe world. It would be interesting to know if porting between Linux and MVS would be impacted by this announcement.

Re:How do they pronounce it at SAS

[Jack William Bell]

Everyone I know who works for SAS or is in anyway associated with SAS (which is quite a few since I live in the city where SAS is headquartered) pronounce it Sass.

Hmmm... Perhaps they were pulling my leg, or maybe it is a West Coast thing. I was told that it was like 'SAP' which, should never be pronounced like it is spelled.

Jack

Re:not OSS, but still okay

[Anomalous Canard]

Most of them have figured out, at least in the IT department, that MS products are useless for mission critical applications. Traditionally, the next step would be commercial Unix, but Linux is actually starting to be placed in the first round of options.

Except that SAS has been available on Unix for many years. After being a SAS user for about 10 years, in 1995 I switched over to being a Unix network manager in a Solaris shop that used SAS.

I also note that the method described in the "windowing" patent for Y2K fixes was available in SAS over 10 years ago.

Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected

not OSS, but still okay

[JonKatz molested me.]

Since this is commercial software, I'll assume it's not going to be OSS. All the same, it's very nice to hear "big names" taking Linux seriously.

Most of them have figured out, at least in the IT department, that MS products are useless for mission critical applications. Traditionally, the next step would be commercial Unix, but Linux is actually starting to be placed in the first round of options. The feature/performance hit isn't as bad as it used to be, and it's a hell a lot cheaper than corporate licenses for Solaris or Tru64.

IMHO, IBM's open support of Linux has probably done more than anything else to open corporate minds to it.

This will get even better with 2.4.

It's good to remember that, despite some opinions on Slashdot, Unix always has been and probably always will be primarily a server OS. The desktop is just an added bonus. Linux doesn't have a chance of touching Windows on the desktop for at least three more years anyway. (Things move fast in the computer world, but Average Joe PC is slow to change.)

The marketshare to be gained by Linux in the present is in the server room.

What's a "major distro"?

[Duxup]

WARNING: Possible dumb question.

SAS mentioned they're support the major distros.
What do most people consider "major distros"?

WARNING: Possible dumber question.
What say would be some of the things that would keep a program working in say Generic Distro A, where it doesn't work in Generic Distro B?
I've heard people mention "such and such doesn't work in X distro but it does in Y distro, but rarely why. Are there any major things that seem to keep things from working in one to the other distro?

Could this become a stumbling block for smaller distro's acceptance if say 4 major distros get most of the support from most companies and the little distro's do not?

Better learn how to pronounce SAS correctly!

[Jack William Bell]

I don't much like SAS, but it is one of the biggest names in business software on the planet. Ghu knows how many companies have SAS software running one or more of their mission critical systems. Hell, my company uses it for Payroll!

But if you every take a look at the development environment I guarentee you will shudder. Really weird stuff, with the data and the language all mixed up. I know some people who have worked with it in the past and they showed it to me and tried to explain it. I never really understood...

But that opaqueness is apparently exactly why SAS consultants make the big bucks. Like Oracle; you get paid extra for learning lots of weird stuff that doesn't work anywhere else.

So anyway, I guess this is great news for Linux. Given SAS, some decent database support and the work IBM has done recently porting Linux to big systems I believe it would be fair to crow a little! Linux is no longer a fringe OS, but is now becoming a major player in the business market. World domination is actually starting to seem plausible.

BTW: My friends who did SAS always took pains to remind me that you don't pronounce it 'Sass', but rather 'Ess Ay Ess'. It really chapped their balls to hear it the wrong way...

Jack