A SAS blog for the rest of us.

Last year I posted a method to "mine" Twitter tweets for public sentiment after the vice-presidential debate. Patrick McLeod (University of Texas) recently posted an article show how he adapted the method to analyze a category of tweets with the #iranelection tag.

You can do fancier tricks with SAS and Twitter if you really get into it, but a FILENAME statement and some XML mapping is a pretty low barrier to entry, don't you think?

SAS programmers can often be (um...let's see...how best to put this...) set in their ways -- at least when it comes to their SAS work.

This is due in part to the nature of SAS. The SAS program that you wrote 20 years ago in Version 5 probably still works today in Version 9.2. As a technology company, SAS is big enabler when it comes to allowing customers to keep what they've got going and not forcing them to adopt new technology. That's a strength of SAS, but it has consequences. It means that our long-time users are not forced to take an in-depth look how our offerings have been modernized over the years. (Example: check out these 10 reasons statisticians should consider SAS 9.2.)

I frequently have the opportunity to introduce SAS programmers to SAS Enterprise Guide. They sometimes approach it with skepticism and trepidation. It looks a lot different than what they are used to. But the thing to remember is this: SAS Enterprise Guide is a tool that is meant to help you be more productive, to lift you out of some of the more tedious aspects of programming so that you can concentrate on your specialities, your domain area of expertise. Its role is not to remove programming from your job, but to help you to organize and focus on the tougher problems.

In a recent interview, software pioneer Dan Bricklin talks about tools that enable programmers and the important role they play. Here is an excerpt:

All of the professional-level languages are in the hardest category, as I put it. They are for professionals. They give you the most power. What the development environments do though is take care of some of the tedious manipulation. And they give you better ways of being able to define various data structures and things like that. From a programmer's viewpoint, it is a major step in lowering the complexity in terms of dealing with things -- you can deal with things that are much more complex. As programmers, what we do is we usually go to the level of complexity we can handle. So if our tools let us make things easier, we go up to that same level complexity and can do a lot more than we used to, because of the leverage of the tools.

If you're a programmer (of SAS or of any language), you've got a right to expect tools that make you more productive. Is SAS Enterprise Guide the ultimate SAS programmer tool? I'm not saying that yet...but I personally believe that it's the most comprehensive SAS productivity environment that exists today. And we're sure working to make it your go-to application for crafting and running SAS programs. Our goal is to help you get more out of your SAS investment.

P.S. In an unrelated thread, SAS tech support notified me today of a problem SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1 has when viewing the output of PROC DIF, a SAS procedure to import DIF (Data Interchange Format) files. DIF was developed in the 1980s for use with VisiCalc by -- guess who -- Dan Bricklin. SAS Enterprise Guide 4.2 fixed the reported issue, by the way. Rest easy, DIF users; we got your back.

AnnMaria's blog describing her acceptance of SAS Enterprise Guide, despite the shortcomings she's found, reminded me of this Irish Spring commercial.

I'd like to take the time to craft a more thoughtful response to her post, but that will have to wait for a less-hectic day. In the meantime, I take her critical points: SAS Enterprise Guide is big and it can be hard to find your way around, and those who prefer SAS programming might find the point-and-clickiness of the app gets in their way. (She had plenty of nice things to say about it as well. Don't take my word for it: read the post.)

As a personal testimonial, I can say that I do a fair amount of SAS programming in my job, and I use SAS Enterprise Guide exclusively for this. But I know my way around it better than most folks, and so I know how to play to its strengths. I need to post some more tips for programmers soon, so that you all can learn to love (or at least live with) SAS Enterprise Guide too.

Like AnnMaria, humorist Dave Barry (who spoke the SAS Global Forum) had something to say about the nature of men, and had this advice: "Women, lower your expectations."

But I appreciate that our customers have high expectations for our software. They should expect to be more productive, and to be able to use our software to let their own brilliance shine through. I believe the pieces are there, and that sometimes all that's needed is a pointer in the right direction.

SAS-sponsored podcasts, including a few from yours truly, are available on www.sas.com.

Interested in hearing from a variety of SAS authors? There are dozens of interviews available on the SAS Press site. For example, listen to the authors of the "Little SAS Book" series, Susan and Lora, as they reveal critical new information -- such as the color of the 4th edition cover of their book (and some new SAS 9.2 coolness as well).

It's been on my to-do list for a while to get into the social bookmarking scene. I've been assembling my shareable SAS-related bookmarks (links to useful SAS resources) using delicious.

Here's what I've got so far. You're invited to connect with me on delicious and help me to build an even larger arsenal of useful links.

The content for this post comes from David Henderson, lead software developer for the SAS Web Parts for Microsoft Sharepoint. David talks about these and other ideas for SAS-Sharepoint integration in his SAS Global Forum paper.

We are pleased to announce the availability of SAS Web Parts 1.1 for Microsoft SharePoint. The SAS Web Parts for Microsoft SharePoint allow you to bring the power of SAS dashboards and SAS analytics to your SharePoint pages. This download currently includes two web parts: the SAS BI Dashboard Web Part and the SAS Stored Process Web Part. The BI Dashboard Web Part displays dashboards and KPIs at a glance to help users monitor organizational performance. Users can delve deeper into analysis using the SAS Stored Process Web Part and drill to other SAS BI tools and analytics products to gain additional insight.

These web parts are for use with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in conjunction with SAS BI Server 9.2. To install these (and any other) web parts, you must have administrative privileges in the SharePoint server and on the SAS BI Server.

This new offering from SAS is being made available via download from support.sas.com. (Here is a direct link to the download package.)

Read on for more details about this offering.