SAS Enterprise Guide: Updating the Metadata with New/Modified Datasets

Submitted by Tricia Aanderud on December 12, 2011 – 7:35 am 8 Comments

When working in SAS Enterprise Guide, you can access data from the metadata libraries. When you make changes to the datasets in the meta library, such as adding or modifying columns, or even deleted datasets, the metadata library does not have the data – it must be registered. Argh – so frustrating especially if you are use to working with the normal SAS libraries. However, you can update the metadata library from SAS Enterprise Guide.

SAS Enterprise Guide Tricks for Working with Metadata

So here’s a simple setup of how you might find yourself in this situation. When creating data for SAS BI Dashboard, you might want a smaller or summarized dataset to use. For this example, there was a dataset called SOURCE in the GA_DATA metadata library. So this dataset was changed up to create the dataset BI_DASH_SRCE. For this example, let’s just assume it’s the most AWESOME data every created for a dashboard and not just a renamed dataset I created for this example.

Creating new metadata

Anyway the issue is when I created this delicious dataset, it was not automagically added to the GA_DATA metadata library – I have to add it. I can use the SAS Management Console but then I have to go open another application and that seems like such a drag.

Updating the Metadata Library

From inside SAS Enterprise Guide, you can view, update, or delete a metadata library (assuming you have permissions!) From the Tools menu, select Update Library Metadata.

Update Metadata Library Utility

In the first step, select the metadata library you want to update. In the second step, there are 5 different options. Select the third one to add the new dataset. (Read the online help for explanations about the other options.) There is an area to log in with an alternate user ID if the current user ID does not have create permissions in the metadata library.

Using the Utility

After it runs, a report is generated explaining what happened. In this case, you see that it added the dataset. There are now a total of 4 datasets in the library. The dataset does not show immediately in the metadata library – just refresh it and you can see it.

Results

Click the Code tab to see exactly what happened. The utility ran the METALIB procedure. If you are writing code, you can just highjack this sweet little poetry and delete the task.