A presentation given by Joe Furbee, Developer Advocate and Developers Communities Manager at SAS Institute, at our 2024 Austin API Summit, March 12-13. Session Description: Sure, we could have hired someone to (re)create our developer portal, developer.sas.com. However, we wanted the freedom to build our portal from the ground up. But, it takes more than an API architect and a developer advocate to create a modern, interactive developer experience. This session provides an overview of the steps we took to relaunch the SAS AI and analytics platform developer portal. Who was involved? How did we accomplish what we wanted to build? We’ll explore the stakeholders involved, the importance of open-source technologies, and why focusing on the developer’s perspective matters. This is not a marketing pitch to promote SAS services. Instead, it’s a detailed look at the process we followed to deploy our new developer portal.

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Me in one minute, or less
After college, I:
• Spent two years teaching high school math in Gabon,
Africa, in the Peace Corps
• Got my Masters in Secondary Math Education
• Taught high school computer applications in
Philadelphia
• Software tester (among several other positions) at IBM
• Developer Advocate and Communities Manager at SAS
joe.furbee@sas.com
@joefurbee1
www.linkedin.com/in/joefurbee
developers.sas.com

2. Copyright © SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.
Agenda
What is a dev
portal?
Wrap up
& Q&A
Calls to
action
Challenges
and risks
The team and
tools
Internal considerations
& benefits
What did
we build?

3. Copyright © SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.
Developer Portal
411 – What is a developer portal?

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What is a developer portal?
A developer portal - often
shortened to devportal - is
the interface between a set
of APIs, SDKs, or other
interactive digital tools and
their various stakeholders.
-Pronovix
A developer portal
serves as a central
hub that houses
essential
resources,
documentation,
tools, and APIs
necessary for
efficient software
development
- Sensedia
The developer
portal serves
as the primary
source of
information
for onboarding
developers
with your APIs
- Unknown

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Key Components of a Developer Portal
Overview
(Home)
Page
Onboarding
Pages
API doc
Interactive
‘try it’
Usage &
Examples
FAQs and
Forums
SDKs
Other
Resources
Any other relevant resources. This could
include links, additional documentation,
sample code, tutorials, etc. Really
anything that doesn’t fall in one of the
categories mentioned previously.

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Developer Portal Audience (persona)
General users
– Web developers
– Application developers
– Open source developers
SAS specific users, general users +
− Data scientists
− Business analysts
− Administrators
− Professors/students
Developer portals are a resource for many kinds of stakeholders, not
just developers.
IOW, people with stickers
on their laptops
Or people coding in
hoodies
The SAS Developers
Portal is for all SAS
users, not just ones
with SAS tattoos.

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Developer Portal
The team and tools

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SAS Institute
Who we are and what we do
− SAS is a data analytics and AI software company, headquartered in Cary, NC
− Founded in 1976 by Dr Jim Goodnight and John Sall
− Annually regarded as one of the ‘Best places to work’
− 95 percent of my assets drive out the gate every evening. It’s my job to maintain a
work environment that keeps those people coming back every morning – Dr Goodnight
− SAS employees ~12K people globally
− SAS has multiple platform offerings
− SAS 9, SAS Viya 3.5, SAS Viya 4 – cloud native

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API Utilization – SAS Hackathon
Hackers used SAS Viya APIs and open source to create their projects
Student team created and app to help
people make financial investments that
align with their goals and values based on
Environmental, Social, and Governance
(ESG) factors.
Created an app to analyze news from
social media and other sources after
natural disasters and then notifies
insurance customers with visual reports
and alerts with details.

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The API Development Experience Team
What roles were involved in developing the API pipeline and portal?
What started with an API Architect, a Developer Advocate, and an idea,
turned into a team of 15+
API Developer Experience Team Members (full- and part-time)
Director, API Developer Experience
Developer Advocate
Product Manager
Program Manager
Documentation API Project Manager
API Security
API Engineer (2)
API UI Engineer (3)
API UI Test Engineer
API Architect (2)
Cloud Engineer
UI Design (2)

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Build the app using
the following
technologies
−JavaScript (React)
−NextJS
−HTML
−CSS
Deploy the app and
API doc on Azure
using the following
−Azure
−Application gateway
−GitHub Actions
−CMS web app
Work closely with
the design team
for the site front-
end interface
− Used the in-house
developed design
system
− We produced an
idea, and they
produced the
design
The Tools and Technologies of the Portal
What tools and technologies were used to build and deploy?
Technologies
Tools

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The Tools and Technologies of the Portal
Application architectural diagram

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Developer Portal
Internal Considerations – How the portal affected API
development

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SAS Developer Portal – API documentation
The original SAS Viya API
documentation was based on….
– Swagger 2.0
– With custom code
– Built with HTML
– And using CSS
This yielded a functional web site but
was....
− Slow to build
− Experienced performance issues
− Laborious to maintain

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dev repos
(GitLab)
Dev repo a
Dev repo b
Dev repo z
APIF MainTrack
pipeline
(Jenkins/Gerrit)
apiOnWorkflow
list
inputs
ci/MainTrack
.Jenkinsfile
convoy/open-
apis repo
(GitLab)
convoy/api-first
repo (GitLab)
- apiReport:
generated reports
- apis: api docs
- ci: pipeline files
- scripts: tools used
by the pipeline
open-apis
pipeline
APIM
platform
api-first-apim
repo in github
rest/open-apis
(for posting report on
internal site)
APIM
workflow
Dev portal
workflow to
dev portal
APIFirst Main Track Workflow
api-first-dev-portal repo
(GitHub)

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SAS Developer Portal 2.0 – Organizational Benefits
Implementing the new devOps pipeline provides regulatory and dev benefits, including….
I’m built using a
new automated
pipeline
− OpenAPI 3 standards
− Built using an automated
pipeline including code
specifications and linting
− Common tooling and
specifications across disparate
product teams
− Rules and tools make things
more consistent
− Tracking changes
− Automate as much of the
governance as possible
− Replace internal doc site

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Developer Portal
What we produced – Our shiny object

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SAS Developer Portal Relaunch
The new developer portal contains many of the features covered on
the ‘Key components of a developer portal’ slide, including:
API
Documentation
API and related
use cases
open source
integration
Programming
Support
Communities
and GitHub
Technologies
and Solutions
SDKs

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SAS Developer Portal 2.0 – DEMO
Let’s take a quick tour of the final product (as of now).

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Developer Portal
Risks and Recommendations – What did we run into? Learn?

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SAS Developer Portal 2.0 – Risks & Recommendations
Risks
− Quality of API documentation
− Exceptions for warnings
− Shaky foundation for additional
automation efforts
Decentralization of Priorities
Recommendations
− Finish OpenAPI 3 / Warnings
− Contract testing
− Put gates around API requirements
− Make doing the right thing normal

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SAS Developer Portal 2.0 – Risks & Recommendations
Risks
− No turnkey way to bring your own app
− Wasteful - each team is
− writing their own deployment automation
− creating their own infrastructure
− making different technology choices
− Hard to find help / consistency
Secure Hosting Best Practices / Frameworks
Recommendations
− Tiger/Dedicated Team
− Well defined criteria
− Well architected framework
− Support for custom needs

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SAS Developer Portal 2.0 – Risks & Recommendations
Recommendations
− Collaborate with Tech Support
− Collaborate with IT
− Implement on-call operations for
SaaS offerings
− Implement automatic notifications
− What are others doing?
Operations and Support
Risks
− Support for this for the entire
architecture stack
− On-call operations team dne
− Community support with best
effort SLAs
− Site availability

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SAS Developer Portal 2.0 – Risks & Recommendations
Risks
− Engineering-led (vs product-led) APIs
− Requests that we publish internal APIs
− Users complain about the complexity
of the APIs
The Right APIs, Built the Right Way
Recommendations
− Differ public verses private APIs
− Public APIs go through the new PDLC
− Private APIs should have technical
barriers

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Developer Portal
Calls to action – Where do we go from here?

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SAS Developer Portal 2.0 – Calls to Action
Future Features
− The initial release of the new SAS Developer Portal
developers.was launched in Q1 2024.
− Features and functionality will continue in 2024.
− Future planned functionality includes:
− ‘Try it’ – allow users to build sample API calls and receive
responses
− Additional REST API examples
− Integrate additional SAS API documentation for additional
products
− Host and automate updates to SDKs
− Add resources for other SAS-related technologies and solutions
− Integrate with the SAS Hackathon
− Add resources for generative artificial intelligence (GenAI)

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SAS Developer Portal 2.0 – Calls to Action
Contact me for more info or with questions
Make high standards for API quality "normal"
Corral Hosting, Ops, Support strategies
Celebrate the new developer site with us! –
Visit developers.sas.com
Takeaways

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Company Confidential — For Internal Use Only
Copyright © SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.
Questions
Thank You!
?
Discussion
Joe Furbee, Developer Advocate, SAS
Institute
joe.furbee@sas.com
@joefurbee1
www.linkedin.com/in/joefurbee
developers.sas.com