Analyze SAS Data Sets Data in Infragistics Reveal

Reveal is a data visualization solution provided by Infragistics and can be paired with the CData API Server to build dynamic dashboards from live SAS Data Sets data. The CData API Server generates an OData API for SAS Data Sets, which is natively consumable in Reveal. In this article, we walk through connecting to SAS Data Sets in API Server and connecting to the API Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.

Connect to SAS Data Sets from API Server

CData API Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

1. Open API Server and click Settings -> Connection -> Add Connection 👁 Adding a connection
   
2. Select "SAS Data Sets" 👁 Selecting a Connector (Salesforce is shown).
   
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to SAS Data Sets.

   Set the following connection properties to connect to your SAS DataSet files:

   Connecting to Local Files

   • Set the Connection Type to "Local." Local files support SELECT, INSERT, and DELETE commands.
   • Set the URI to a folder containing SAS files, e.g. C:\PATH\TO\FOLDER\.

   Connecting to Cloud-Hosted SAS DataSet Files

   While the driver is capable of pulling data from SAS DataSet files hosted on a variety of cloud data stores, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE are not supported outside of local files in this driver.

   Set the Connection Type to the service hosting your SAS DataSet files. A unique prefix at the beginning of the URI connection property is used to identify the cloud data store and the remainder of the path is a relative path to the desired folder (one table per file) or single file (a single table). For more information, refer to the Getting Started section of the Help documentation.

   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown).
   

Add SAS Data Sets Resource Definitions in API Server

After connecting to SAS Data Sets, create Resources, which represent API endpoints for SAS Data Sets data.

1. Click Settings -> Resources -> Add Resource 👁 Adding a new resource
   
2. Select the SAS Data Sets connection 👁 Selecting a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
3. Select the table you wish to retrieve and click Next 👁 Selecting a Table (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
5. Save the settings

Add an API Server User

Create a User to connect to SAS Data Sets from Reveal through API Server.

1. Click Settings -> Users
2. Click Add
3. Configure a User with access to the SAS Data Sets Connection and Resource(s) 👁 Creating a new user
   

(Optional) Configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

When accessing and connecting to multiple different domains from an application such as Ajax, there is a possibility of violating the limitations of cross-site scripting. In that case, configure the CORS settings in Settings -> Server.

• Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS): ON
• Allow all domains without '*': ON
• Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, PUT, POST, OPTIONS
• Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization

Save the changes to the settings.

Create a Dashboard in Reveal

With the API Server configured, we can visualize SAS Data Sets data in Reveal.

1. Log into Reveal and click Dashboards -> New 👁 Adding a new dashboard
   
2. Click Data Source -> OData Feed 👁 Adding a new OData data source
   
3. Specify the API Server API endpoint URL, for example: https://serverurl/api.rsc 👁 Configuring the OData URL
   
4. Select Generic Credentials and specify the API Server username and authentication token 👁 Configuring the credentials
   
5. Select the entity you wish to visualize 👁 Selecting an entity to visualize (Salesforce is shown.)
   
6. Select fields and choose a chart type 👁 Visualizing data in Reveal (Salesforce is shown.)
   

More Information & Free Trial

At this point, you have created a simple dashboard from live SAS Data Sets data. For more information on creating OData feeds from SAS Data Sets (and more than 150 other sources), visit the API Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live SAS Data Sets data in tools that consume OData APIs.