SasCsvToolkit -- A versatile parallel 'bag-of-tasks' job submission application on heterogeneous and homogeneous platforms for Big Data Analytics such as for Biomedical Informatics

TL;DR

SasCsvToolkit is a versatile tool enabling efficient conversion and processing of SAS data formats into CSV and vice versa, supporting parallel execution on heterogeneous platforms for big data analytics in biomedical informatics.

Contribution

The paper introduces SasCsvToolkit, a novel toolkit that facilitates SAS data conversion and analysis using parallel 'bag-of-tasks' execution on diverse computing platforms.

Findings

Implemented on SLURM scheduler for parallel processing

Supports conversion between SAS and CSV formats

Provides templates for common database operations

Abstract

Background: The need for big data analysis requires being able to process large data which are being held fine-tuned for usage by corporate. It is only very recently that the need for big data has caught attention for low budget corporate groups and academia who typically do not have money and resources to buy expensive licenses of big data analysis platforms such as SAS. The corporate continue to work on SAS data format largely because of systemic organizational history and that the prior codes have been built on them. The data-providers continue to thus provide data in SAS formats. Acute sudden need has arisen because of this gap of data being in SAS format and the coders not having a SAS expertise or training background as the economic and inertial forces acting of having shaped these two class of people have been different. Method: We analyze the differences and thus the need for SasCsvToolkit which helps to generate a CSV file for a SAS format data so that the data scientist can then make use of his skills in other tools that can process CSVs such as R, SPSS, or even Microsoft Excel. At the same time, it also provides conversion of CSV files to SAS format. Apart from this, a SAS database programmer always struggles in finding the right method to do a database search, exact match, substring match, except condition, filters, unique values, table joins and data mining for which the toolbox also provides template scripts to modify and use from command line. Results: The toolkit has been implemented on SLURM scheduler platform as a `bag-of-tasks` algorithm for parallel and distributed workflow though serial version has also been incorporated.