We build applications on SAS, we migrate SAS 9 interfaces, and we modernise legacy AF/SCL code. This post is a short statement of scope - the three things we do, the three things we deliberately do not do, and the open source framework we work on the rest of the time. If you are a SAS customer or a SAS partner with a SAS interface in your inventory, or sitting inside a proposal you are reviewing, it should tell you quickly whether we are the right people to talk to.
What we don’t do
We don’t build data pipelines. Data engineering is a discipline in its own right, and the people who are good at it are specialists in exactly that. Our interest is in the user interfaces to data from SAS.
We don’t manage SAS platforms. Installing, upgrading and administering SAS 9 or Viya is platform work, normally owned by an internal SAS admin team. We build on top of the platform, and we are happy to leave the day-to-day running of it to the people who own it.
We don’t place generic consultants. We are not a resourcing agency. When you engage us you get the people who do the work - the same people who maintain SASjs and who have spent their careers building SAS applications.
What we do
We manifest and support Apps on SAS. Apps means web applications that put a proper interface on SAS logic - built for SAS 9 (stored processes) or SAS Viya (jobs and compute services), delivered with documentation and tests, and either handed over to your team or supported on a fixed price plan. Read more about SAS app delivery and SAS app support.
We migrate SAS 9 STP interfaces. Stored processes are how a great many organisations expose SAS logic to the outside world - parameterised SAS programs called from a portal, a web page, or an Office add-in. Migrating those interfaces keeps the business logic intact while the thing in front of it moves to something maintainable, and can target either SAS 9 or Viya.
We modernise legacy AF/SCL. SAS/AF and SCL are the desktop application development facilities from the SAS 9 era - a point and click interface builder paired with an object orientated language, compiled into catalogs and launched from a network drive. We rebuild the user interface as a modern HTML5 web app and reuse the SCL data logic via the SCL Transcoding Kit, so the application keeps working without an AF licence. There is a full write-up in Modernising Legacy SAS SCL / AF Applications.
The rest of the time: SASjs
When we are not doing those three things, we are working on SASjs - an MIT licensed, open source, cross-platform framework for SAS powered application development. It runs against Base SAS, SAS Enterprise BI and SAS Viya, and it exists to accelerate and de-risk exactly the kind of work described above. It is also why our projects can be handed over cleanly: the build, the tests, the CI and the deployment tooling are all public and documented.
Start at sasjs.io, the source is at github.com/sasjs, and the CLI documentation is at cli.sasjs.io.
Let’s talk
If you are a SAS customer or a SAS partner, and you have a SAS interface in your inventory - or in a proposal - we would like to hear about it. Get in touch.