News

SAS Tackles Big Data Virtualization

• By David Ramel
• April 4, 2014

SAS this week announced enhancements to its data management software that will include Big Data virtualization capabilities.

A new version of SAS Federation Server, expected to ship this quarter, will enable developers to access Big Data stores on Hadoop, SAP HANA, Oracle, DB2 and other sources. Big Data virtualization creates visual representations of heterogeneous, disparate data sources without actually having to manage or move the original data.

"This data-as-a-service approach provides easily consumable access to shared, secure enterprise data to speed and simplify data preparation," SAS said. Security has also been improved, with better data masking and data governance capabilities to manage policies and access and restrictions to data.

SAS Federation Server, currently at version 3.2, includes ODBC, JDBC and native drivers to access data sources and, through data federation, developers can use a single query. It uses a SQL variant called Federation Server SQL for consistent functionality regardless of the original data source. Figure 1 shows the SQL console.

Required host platforms, or server tiers, include HP/UX on Itanium, IBM AIX R64 on POWER architecture 7.1, IBM z/OS V1R11 and higher, Linux x64, 64-bit Microsoft Windows editions and others, while the middle tier requires HP/UX on Itanium, IBM AIX on POWER, Linux x64, Windows x64, and Solaris SPARC or x64.

SAS also already updated its Master Data Management software, with features such as embedded data quality, an enhanced UI and pervasive data governance designed to enhance cooperation between business and IT teams.