@sassoftware/mcp-serverjs

MCP servers based on the Model Context Protocol (MCP) from Anthropic is one of the popular additions to the agentic-ai world. Its brilliance is its simplicity. Users can mix and match capabilities supplied by multiple vendors from the comfort of a client like GitHub Copilot Experts can build mcp servers that is guaranteed to work any mcp enabled client There is a growing collection of mcp servers and mcp clients. You can find many of them listed here. So what does this mean for SAS developers and users? SAS developers create models using products like Model Studio and by writing custom SAS code that takes macro variables as input. Typically this is followed by developing some UI for the end users to access these models. The mcp server approach provides a nice alternative to deliver these models to the user. Terminology: In the rest of this article, "model" refers to all of these: Models created with SAS solutions like Model Studio, Intelligent Decisioning etc... User written SAS programs Functions that call any SAS products using REST API Details on the scoring mcp server This article describes the viya-scoring-mcp-server to score models described above. The source code is this repository It is provided under the Apache-2.0 license. This diagram shows the flow from a user prompt to the final response. mcp Server in Action ,,,, insert video here mcp server capabilities The mcp server has the following tools for scoring. The LLM decides which tool to call based on the user prompt. Simple tool devascore - calculates a special score given two numbers. This is useful for verifying that the server is functioning. Also an easy to follow example of a tool Data related tools findLibrary - check if specified library exists listLibrary - list available libraries in cas or sas findTable - check if specified table exists in specified library in cas or sas listTables - list tables in a specified library in cas or sas readTable - read records from a cas or sas table Scoring with Models in MAS findModel - check if specified model exists in MAS server listModels - list models published to MAS modelInfo - display the input and output variables for a specified model modelScore - score using the selected model Scoring with SCR scrInfo - display the input and output variables for a specified SCR instance scrScore - score using the specified SCR instance Scoring with SAS code superstat - an example of accessing custom SAS code Using the default mcp server Follow these basic steps Step 1: Start the mcp server Issue this command from any shell on your desktop npx @sassoftware/mcp-serverjs@latest Make sure that you have a node version >=22 Step 2: Enable github copilot for the mcp server Similar methodologies can be used with other mcp enabled copilots. Go to the vscode settings and search for mcp. Then select Model Server Context Protocol. Edit its config json Add the following to the list of mcp servers { "viya-scoring-mcp-server": { "type": "http", "url": "http://localhost:8080/mcp" } } The name can be anything you like. Sidebar: Authentication with your Viya Server This mcp server cli works similar to SAS supplied sas-viya cli commands. Use the following command to create the necessary token and refresh token. You need to do this once every 90 days or whenever the refresh token expires. Issue this command and follow instruction: sas-viya profile init Issue this command and follow the instructions: sas-viya auth loginCode Issuing prompts Use the copilot prompt area to issue prompts. Here are some sample prompts list models sho Notes This demo server is "stateless" - it does not cache any values, including any Viya sessions the tools might have created. In a production system the designer has to make decisions on what needs to be cached and the implications of such caching. The implication of this design choice is felt most when the tool needs to create a compute session - the requests will take longer than when the compute session is cached. Useful links Documentation on modelcontextprotocol(mcp) mcp sdk