Metacoda
Maximizing Productivity through Enhanced Visibility of SAS Platform Metadata

“Foreseeing the future of data analytics and aspiring to help SAS customers get more value from their SAS platform metadata, led to the foundation of Metacoda in 2007,” begins Michelle Homes, founder and business development manager. Metacoda is a SAS Silver Alliance member that specializes in the development of software add-ons to help enterprises and organizations get more out of their SAS software investment. “We focus on maximizing productivity through enhanced visibility, specializing in the area of SAS platform metadata,” adds Michelle. Metacoda sees metadata and its security as a significant and integral component of any data analytics solution.

Traditionally, the security of data within the perimeters of an organization was regarded as a secondary concern, but with shared enterprise environments and external workers, today it is one of the chief concerns. Metacoda’s plug-ins and add-ons’ help SAS users and companies maintain a secure SAS installation which allows them to confidently control access via metadata in the SAS technology landscape. “Metacoda considers its software an essential part of a well secured SAS platform. It is customer driven software which includes security reporting and searching,” explains Michelle. It offers many time saving and distinctive features, like the ‘automated security testing and alerts’ which eliminate significant manual work. Metacoda Security Plug-ins includes a number of reviewers and explorers providing many different perspectives. These focuses on helping SAS platform administrators quickly manage, review, audit, troubleshoot, document and test metadata security for their SAS environments. “The plug-ins encourages them to more readily address compliance requirements” says Michelle. While Metacoda Custom Task consists of a Metadata Table Finder and a Metadata Column Finder, two free add-ons that can be installed into existing SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office software installations.

Metacoda has been successfully building, developing and supporting their products within the SAS platform ecosystem. They support many customers worldwide with one of them being an ‘Australian State Government Agency’ that manages hundreds of SAS users and data from over 50 collection points within their SAS environment. It has a complex security model which ensures appropriate access to only authorized users. “Our software helps them confidently manage SAS metadata security as business needs change. It simplifies the ongoing management through visualization and provides warnings, making it easier to identify any issues,” explains Michelle. In another instance, SAS Institute Australia, which provides technical expertise to their licensed customers in Australia and New Zealand, uses Metacoda Plug-ins as part of their SAS platform support services. Metacoda Plug-ins offers them a simple, seamless interface to understand the many relationships and permissions within a metadata environment. The plug-ins save a huge amount of time and effort in providing a clear, well presented view of the security metadata.

Our software helps SAS users and companies maintain a secure SAS installation

With close to two decades of rich experience as a SAS user, Michelle is accustomed to many roles over the years, as a consultant, trainer and mentor. She enjoys solving business challenges for SAS software users and helps people streamline their business processes through the flexibility of the SAS platform in combination with Metacoda software. Michelle has been a very active participant in the SAS community and is keen on spreading awareness about the advantage and additional benefits Metacoda software can provide. She concludes, “We plan to add new additional functionality as requested by our customers and that’s how we progress; by continuing to exploit metadata for business benefits.”