Create Apps from SAS Data Sets Data in Qlik Sense Cloud

Qlik Sense Cloud allows you to create and share data visualizations and interact with information in new ways. The CData Connect Server creates a virtual database for SAS Data Sets and can be used to generate an OData API (natively consumable in Qlik Sense Cloud) for SAS Data Sets. By pairing Qlik Sense Cloud with the CData Connect Server, you get live connectivity to all of your SaaS and cloud-based Big Data and NoSQL sources — no need to migrate your data or write your integrations. Simply connect to Connect Server from Qlik Sense Cloud as you would any other REST service and get instant, live access to your SAS Data Sets data.

In this article, we walk through two connections:

1. Connecting to SAS Data Sets in Connect Server
2. Connecting to Connect Server from Qlik Sense Cloud to create a model and build a simple dashboard

Configure Connect Server to Connect to SAS Data Sets

To connect to SAS Data Sets data from Qlik Sense Cloud, you need to configure SAS Data Sets access from your Connect Server instance. This means creating a user, connecting to SAS Data Sets, adding OData endpoints, and (optionally) configuring CORS.

Add a Connect Server User

Create a Connect Server User to connect to SAS Data Sets from Qlik Sense Cloud.

1. Click Users -> Add
2. Configure a User
3. Click Save Changes and make note of the Authtoken for the new user

Connect to SAS Data Sets from Connect Server

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

1. Open Connect Server and click Connections
2. Select "SAS Data Sets" from Available Data Sources
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.

4. Click Save Changes
5. Click Privileges -> Add, and add the new user (or an existing user) with the appropriate permissions (SELECT is all that is required for Reveal)

Add SAS Data Sets OData Endpoints in Connect Server

After connecting to SAS Data Sets, create OData Endpoint for the desired table(s).

1. Click OData -> Tables -> Add Tables
2. Select the SAS Data Sets database
3. Select the table(s) you wish to work with and click Next
4. (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
5. Save the settings

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

When accessing and connecting to multiple 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 OData -> Settings.

• 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 Qlik Sense App from SAS Data Sets Data

With the connection to SAS Data Sets and OData endpoints created, we are ready to add SAS Data Sets data to a Qlik Sense app for visualizations, analytics, reporting, and more.

Create a New App and Upload Data

1. Log into your Qlik Sense instance and click the button to create a new app
2. Name and configure the new app and click "Create"
3. In the workspace, click to open the new app
4. Click to add data from files and other sources
5. Select the REST connector and set the configuration properties. For the most part, you will use the default values, with the following exceptions:
   • URL: Set this to the API endpoint for your SAS Data Sets table, using the @CSV URL parameter to ensure a CSV response (i.e. CONNECT_SERVER_URL/api.rsc/SASDataSets_restaurants?@CSV)
   • Authentication Schema: Set this to "Basic"
   • User Name: Set this to the user name you configured above
   • Password: Set this to the Authtoken for the above user
6. Click "Create" to query Connect Server for the SAS Data Sets data
7. Check "CSV has header" and under "Tables," select "CSV_source"
8. Select columns and click "Add data"

Generate Insights or Customize Your App

With the data loaded into Qlik Sense, you are ready to begin discovering insights. Click "Generate insights" to let Qlik analyze your data. Otherwise, you can build custom visualizations, reports, and dashboards based on your SAS Data Sets data.

More Information & Free Trial

Now, you have created a simple but powerful dashboard from live SAS Data Sets data. For more information on creating OData feeds from SAS Data Sets (and more than 200 other data sources), visit the Connect Server page. Sign up for a free trial and start working with live SAS Data Sets data in Qlik Sense Cloud.