Foreword

      SAS^® Viya^® marks a new and important chapter in our ever-evolving SAS software. A unified, open, powerful, and cloud-ready platform built on excellence in data management, advanced analytics, and high-performance computing.

      These pillars of SAS Viya are important individually, but it is through their combination that the platform comes to life. The ability to access a central data management and computing environment through public APIs and from multiple programming languages, with consistent security and data models is a core competency of the modern analytic platform.

      The Python language has quickly grown into one of the important programming languages for data science and analytics. As the SAS R&D team embarked on building SAS Cloud Analytic Services (CAS), the engine of the SAS Viya platform, it was obvious that access from Python would be important.

      The Python client for SAS Viya was developed by Kevin Smith as a member of the core team that designed and developed SAS Cloud Analytic Services. This book by Kevin and Xiangxiang Meng takes you on a journey to learn and apply Python programming in the context of the SAS Viya platform. Their deep understanding of the SAS Viya server architecture, the client architecture, and the Python language implementation shines through in every chapter.

      As a lifelong learner, I greatly enjoyed the journey and am sure that you will, too.