SAS Warehouse Administrator to Feature Data Transformation Network
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InfoWorld has reported that SAS Institute plans to fit its Warehouse Administrator tool with a data transformation framework, enabling customized data transformations. The feature is slated to debut next month. This feature, along with new Java browser support, will be included in SAS/Warehouse Administrator 1.3., due for shipment in mid-May, according to SAS officials. Warehouse Administrator is a tool for the management of datawarehouse processes, including the setup and management of multiple warehouses and data marts.

Transformations for vertical applications, such as banking, will be able to be registered in a transformation library, making it easier to cleanse and prepare data for inclusion in a warehouse, according to SAS officials. Transformation routines for specific applications will be developed by SAS, for release at an as-yet-undetermined time. At first, only transformations developed in SAS' proprietary programming language will be permitted, but the capability may be extended to other languages.

SAS' plans for transformation libraries would extend previous SAS technologies for data formatting, said one user of SAS' decision-support products. The prewritten transformations would serve as a portfolio, said Dr. Scott Optenberg, chief of the analysis branch of the U.S. Center for Health Care Education and Studies in San Antonio. "That's great that they're doing it," Optenberg said.

Version 1.3 will also feature a Java warehouse viewer, enabling administrators to set up a warehouse so that it could be viewed by a Java-compliant browser. Users would get access to warehouse meta data, or information about the origin of data. Version 1.3 of SAS' Warehouse Administrator, which will run on a variety of Unix operating systems and on Windows NT, is expected to cost $35,000.

For the long term, the company is pondering how best to add data-management services to its warehouse offerings that would enable SAS warehouse users to be able to detect and purge data that is not being used. Monitoring data stored in data warehouses for its usefulness could involve either building a new tool, adding this functionality to Warehouse Administrator, or partnering with another vendor, such as Pine Cone Systems, said SAS' Jim Davis, program manager for data warehousing, in Cary, N.C.

Analysts believe this functionality is particularly important in warehouses developed without user input. "You're more likely to run into this problem (of excess data) if the data warehouse itself was created with little user input," said Henry Morris, an analyst at International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass.

SAS' plan to add this functionality to its warehouse offerings demonstrates a maturity of the warehouse market, Morris said. SAS officials also said that the company intends to supplement enterprise resource planning packages from vendors such as SAP, Baan, and PeopleSoft with decision-support functions. But the company does not yet have formal relationships with Baan and PeopleSoft.

In the nearer term, SAS is planning in two weeks to release the commercial version of its Enterprise Miner data-mining tool, which features a graphical interface and sophisticated data-mining techniques, according to company officials.

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