In 2025, Data Controller’s theme was making governed, auditable data change easier to roll out — especially on SAS Viya — while continuing to invest in metadata/catalog capabilities and accessibility.

What is Data Controller?

Data Controller is a SAS-powered web application for adding, modifying, and deleting data in target tables—while keeping control with data owners via a review/approve workflow and a full audit trail.

Under the hood, it’s designed for multi-user, production-friendly operation (locking, security, approvals, and repeatable update logic), and it supports multiple SAS environments (including SAS 9 and Viya).

2025 at a glance

Across calendar year 2025, releases moved from v6.12.2 (27JAN25) to v7.2.5 (09DEC25).

Key themes:

• Viya deployments became dramatically simpler, including "streaming app" deployment improvements (frontend in SAS Files), sensible defaults, and compute-context-aware setup.
• Data Catalog expanded to include SAS catalogs and associated objects / entries, with corresponding storage changes and migrations.
• Accessibility work accelerated, culminating in high Lighthouse scores, improved screen reader support, and CI checks to keep it that way.

1) Viya: from "deployment project" to "quick start"

A major through-line of 2025 was reducing the friction of getting DC live on SAS Viya:

• Content Security Policy (CSP) hardening & UI refactor
  The UI was refactored to comply with Viya’s default (and strict) CSP, with deploy-flow improvements targeted at Viya.

• Better defaults for single-user installs
  DC began defaulting the physical deployment path and SAS Drive location in ways that reduce the need for pre-provisioned shared directories in straightforward scenarios.

• Compute-context-aware installs & streaming deploy maturity
  Releases in early June focused on ensuring deployment actions happen with the selected shared compute context, and then delivering a streaming Viya version that can self-configure key deployment choices during setup.

2) Extending the Data Catalog: SAS catalogs + objects

On June 11, 2025, v7.0.0 introduced a major upgrade to cataloging:

• Explore SAS catalogs and their objects, including created/modified attributes
• Store catalog + object data alongside existing catalog entities (libraries/tables/variables)
• UX improvements like additional counts and reducing the need for manual refresh steps after table configuration changes

This aligned well with DC’s broader approach to metadata: DC’s optional data + catalog scan is designed to track how your SAS estate changes over time (including storing history using SCD2 patterns).

3) Accessibility + UX: measurable improvements (and staying power)

2025 saw repeated, explicit investment in accessibility:

• v6.14.5: "significantly improves accessibility (lighthouse) scores" and also included a practical SAS hook-related robustness fix (%GLOBAL SQLRC;) for embedded DI Job usage.
• v7.1.0: a frontend-only release focused on accessibility (Lighthouse 100%) and screen reader support, plus a small grid interaction improvement (Excel-like deselection).
• v7.2.0: introduced a Lighthouse accessibility check pipeline to keep accessibility from regressing.

4) Internationalisation + "real world" data correctness

A few 2025 changes were about getting the "last mile" right in global SAS estates:

• Handling national-language datetime formats
• Metadata navigation sorting improvements using linguistic sort sequences

5) A 2025 customer story: AFA Insurance

During 2025 we also detailed the Data Controller use case with AFA Insurance (Sweden). They describe using Data Controller primarily for steering/mapping/control tables, where:

• End users perform the mapping themselves in DC
• Approvals are done directly in production without needing fixed programs
• Filters are used so users focus only on "new signals" that need mapping

They call out the approval workflow and history/audit as standout features, and also mention value from dropdowns, hooks, and lineage.

2025 Release Highlights

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We would like to thank all of our customers for their continued support and feedback.

Our mission is for Data Controller to be secure, simple, and fast - when loading ad-hoc data into SAS.

If you'd like to try it out, just go ahead and perform an installation - the base product does not require a paid license.

We're also happy to provide complementary deployment support, just reach out.