After just one day, I hate SAS
September 8, 2006So our admin guy left the company rather suddenly. I can’t give out details, but I will say it was not an amicable departure. He did not therefore do any transition training.
Now the worse part of this story is that we’ve been told they will not be re-hiring to fill the admin role. They want to use the requisition for a new role, a high-powered systems architect. Meaning the rest of us on the team will have to pick up various aspects of the admin’s job. Some of that’s not so bad–we already have a DBA, and he can easily pick up all the little Oracle chores that the admin used to do.
But our former admin also handled admin tasks for a couple specialized business-intelligence tools, including a large SAS installation. Like an idiot, I’ve volunteered to pick up that role. I figured I’ve never done either SAS or admin work, so this would be a good chance to do both. Plus the internal SAS customers are not the same as the customers for our Portal work, so this seemed like a chance to meet and work with a wider group of people in the company. Broaden my horizons all around, if you will.
It’s only been a day since I agreed to this additional responsibility, and I am already beginning to regret it. I’ve now spent the better part of an hour trying in vain to find a file called the “SAS log”. That’s how it’s described in the documentation and the SAS Web site.
Apparently the SAS app writes a couple key bits of data into that log, including the license key. I need that license key because the SAS web site requires it for me to update the SAS registration and let them know that I’m the new admin for our SAS install.
I’ve run searches, both local and on Google, and still cannot find any “SAS log” file anywhere on our SAS system. I’m beginning to think they only mention it to frustrate new SAS admins. There’s probably some secret little place where it’s hidden, with a filename that’s not obvious from the descriptive name “SAS log”.
Well I’m not giving up quite yet. But I’m definitely hating SAS already.