[CLOSED] webfocus and SAS

December 15, 2006, 09:24 AM

Hi All,

Our company is trying to justify our use of WebFOCUS and push us towards SAS. I personally feel that WF is the more robust and powerful tool, epecially combined with ReportCaster. However, not knowing SAS, I cannot be sure. Has anyone used both extensively? What are the strengths of both? Can I get people's thoughts?

thanks,
Alan

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kerry,

December 15, 2006, 09:31 AM

Leah

I haven't used SAS in some time. Seems to me it's biggest strength is number/statistics manipulation.

December 15, 2006, 10:36 AM

BlueZone

Alan, let me start by first accepting that I am sure biased towards WF too. But like Leah was saying, it would totally depend on the target user base. While we have had WF for over 5 years, SAS-EnterpriseGuide was brought in exclusively for the Actuarial/Statistics department to let them do their own thing (with minimal support from IT).
Unless you already have users with SAS exp., it will be a decently long learning curve. For starters, SAS-EG has a big footprint on each User's desktop and is limited to PCs it has been installed on (unlike the WF thin-client). While there are some numerical functions that SAS can do better, the SAS-DB2 connect to the mainframe as we have here, cannot translate many SAS commands to SQL. In some of these cases, SAS tried to bring down the entire 100-million row DB2 tables down to the SAS server and process the data there. We have less than 10 SAS users and they have caused some heavy network traffic while using SAS. Many of the functions in SAS are not too straight-forward and visible either.
Of course, these kinda things will become sporadic with time. BTW, do you have the option of keeping both WF & SAS ? WF has the advantage of having the EDASERV on the mainframe, right where the data is, and most of the processing can be done right there before passing back the result set thru the network to the server/end-user.
Those are some of the first things that I can tell you about SAS vs WF.
Hope its clear as mud !!!

Best regards,
Sandeep Mamidenna

December 15, 2006, 10:42 AM

BlueZone

And may I add that it was quite an undertaking for us to get all the installation/configurations right at our place. And then our Data team had to work for weeks/months to build new tables/databases for these SAS users so as to not impact the overall DB2 performance.

Sandeep Mamidenna

December 15, 2006, 11:30 AM

susannah

they're totally different animals, as are the developers for each. WF joins up with SPSS (another stat package , that's been around for decades, as well.) beautifully. That's the perfect solution for you... statistical functionality with killer extract, dw, and reporting. SAS developers are just as fanatic about SAS as WF developers are about WF, and justifiably so, but for totally different purposes. If your company is just wanting more stat power, then go look at SPSS and the nice wf connectability.

December 15, 2006, 11:53 AM

alandool

Thanks, Leah, Sandeep, & susannah.

Actually, w/o getting into a long story, it's a case of standard tools for the company ... that is ... SAS is considered a standard tool while WF is not. We are trying to make a case to keep WF. That is -- if we are forced to go to SAS -- we are going to lose functionality and not be able to do what we have historically been able to do with WF. Not to mention a steep learning curve for SAS.

What I hear you all saying is that they are not equal in functionality (which I presumed), in the sense that SAS is more for statistical purposes (?). Needless to say, that really worries me. Historically, we have used WF for connecting to various platforms (Teradata, DB2, Oracle, flatfiles, Access), extensive data manipulation, putting together huge datasets with queries involving many multiple steps, for lots of report generation (with some front-end web apps), job scheduling, running DOS/Windows scripts, and the like.

Thoughts?

Alan

December 15, 2006, 12:19 PM

BlueZone

Thanks for bring up SPSS Susannah. It was on my mind when I started my note, but forgot mentioning it as I closed it.

And yes Alan, SAS has the advantage by itself if you are talking about core-statistical functions like Mean,SD,etc. But the SPSS add-on would give you that with WF. But ofcourse WF has the upper hand when you are talking about all kinds of data access from various platforms, manipulation, formatting and presentation (Caster included). To port all you got to SAS would be close to impossible.

Sandeep Mamidenna.

December 15, 2006, 12:43 PM

susannah

and just a note that SPSS has been around since punch cards. ( i know 'cause i keypunched my own dissertation data, for any of you who know what a punch card is).. so, talk about 'standard'.

October 04, 2010, 02:06 PM

AMARAVATHI

quote:
Originally posted by BlueZone:
Alan, let me start by first accepting that I am sure biased towards WF too. But like Leah was saying, it would totally depend on the target user base. While we have had WF for over 5 years, SAS-EnterpriseGuide was brought in exclusively for the Actuarial/Statistics department to let them do their own thing (with minimal support from IT).
Unless you already have users with SAS exp., it will be a decently long learning curve. For starters, SAS-EG has a big footprint on each User's desktop and is limited to PCs it has been installed on (unlike the WF thin-client). While there are some numerical functions that SAS can do better, the SAS-DB2 connect to the mainframe as we have here, cannot translate many SAS commands to SQL. In some of these cases, SAS tried to bring down the entire 100-million row DB2 tables down to the SAS server and process the data there. We have less than 10 SAS users and they have caused some heavy network traffic while using SAS. Many of the functions in SAS are not too straight-forward and visible either.
Of course, these kinda things will become sporadic with time. BTW, do you have the option of keeping both WF & SAS ? WF has the advantage of having the EDASERV on the mainframe, right where the data is, and most of the processing can be done right there before passing back the result set thru the network to the server/end-user.
Those are some of the first things that I can tell you about SAS vs WF.
Hope its clear as mud !!!

Best regards,
Sandeep Mamidenna

Hi Sandeep,

We are doing Webfocus code conversion to sas code.In that time we need to produce reports based on webfocus reports.Could you send me any code examples of this connversion.

October 05, 2010, 12:23 AM

AMARAVATHI

quote:
Originally posted by alandool:
Hi All,

Our company is trying to justify our use of WebFOCUS and push us towards SAS. I personally feel that WF is the more robust and powerful tool, epecially combined with ReportCaster. However, not knowing SAS, I cannot be sure. Has anyone used both extensively? What are the strengths of both? Can I get people's thoughts?

thanks,
Alan

October 05, 2010, 08:24 AM

AMARAVATHI

Hi,

I am vary new to webfocus.According to my project requires webfocus code convert into sas code.Webfocus reports should be also convert into sas reports.Do you aware of this could you send me some sample codes.

Regards
Praveen

October 06, 2010, 04:18 AM

OPALTOSH

Gooluck. I cannot see you getting much assistance from this forum.

SAS and WebFOCUS are vastly different in the way they work.

October 06, 2010, 10:08 AM

Francis Mariani

There's absolutely no way anyone on this forum would assist in converting WebFOCUS code to SAS code. People are stealing our bread and butter and now they want the meat as well!

October 06, 2010, 10:28 AM

GinnyJakes

I recently left a company that had both WebFOCUS and SAS. There were many SAS bigots who lived and died with it. But there were just as many who loved WebFOCUS. One of the knocks that I heard about SAS was the inability to do drill downs. Also, many people created SAS DBs and used WebFOCUS to report against them. We used an ODBC connection and it worked quite well.

October 06, 2010, 11:28 AM

Francis Mariani

quote:
many people created SAS DBs and used WebFOCUS to report against them. We used an ODBC connection and it worked quite well.

That's quite interesting!!! I was not aware there is a SAS ODBC driver. I suppose this is an add-on to SAS and costs extra...

October 06, 2010, 02:30 PM

GinnyJakes

I don't know if the cost is extra for the SAS ODBC driver. If you need more information, private post me and I'll give you a contact name,

October 07, 2010, 04:38 AM

Baillecl

Bonjour,
As a private Joke, I'd say that Focus Analyse can stand the Statistical Analysis by SAS ...
I was happy enough as to work in a company using both SAS and Focus (long time ago, as usual with me).
We prepared Data in the Focus World where all could be reached. We extracted (Random) about 10% and built with Focus the Sas Code for getting this extract into the Sas World.
My Marketing friend made a tough Job of Data Analysis with Sas (calculating efficient Indicators).
Still with Sas he built the Define Code that would make Focus able to calculate those "Sas indicators of segmentation".
Our idea was big Job with Focus, Intellectual Statistical Analysis with Sas (on a fragment of our Data) => Building of Indicators that Focus could apply to the whole Data.
I really enjoyed the complentarity of both tools.
And I'll turn to another private Joke : Focus and Sas fought so much as being the best and the other an old-fashioned tool that Business Object could grow his own way ...
But this place is Focus oriented, and I don't pretend to be objective. This Focus is mine (M. Jackson).
Focusely and Cordially