+Chris Hemedinger is the Director of SAS User Engagement, which includes our SAS Communities and SAS User Groups. Since 1993, Chris has worked for SAS as an author, a software developer, an R&D manager and a consultant. Inexplicably, Chris is still coasting on the limited fame he earned as an author of SAS For Dummies.
When I work on SAS projects that create lots of files as results, it's often a requirement that those files be organized in a certain folder structure. The exact structure depends on the project, but here's an example: /results |__ html |__ images |__ xls |__ data Before you can
Many SAS Enterprise Guide users practically live in the Query Builder. For those who understand their data tables, the Query Builder provides a tremendous amount of flexibility to pull and manipulate data. The Query Builder produces SQL programs behind the scenes, which translates well for database-centric work. Sometimes a complex
If you've watched any of the demos for SAS Visual Analytics (or even tried it yourself!), you have probably seen this nifty exploration of multiple measures. It's a way to look at how multiple measures are correlated with one another, using a diagonal heat map chart. The "stronger" the color
As part of my follow-up to SAS Global Forum 2013, I've posted a few articles about how to create your own client apps with SAS Integration Technologies. This article shows how to use Microsoft .NET -- the same approach used for SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office
One of the great things about SAS libraries is that you can write your programs to read and write data without having to worry about where the data lives. SAS data set on a file system? Oracle table in a database server? Hadoop data in Hive? For many SAS applications,
If you write a blog, you deal with spam comments. That's just part of the deal. Spammers are forever inventing new and creative methods for "tricking" you into accepting their spam comments. These comments have nothing to do with your blog topic but do contain trackback links to their own
Last week I alluded to some very useful applications of the Copy Files task. This is one of them. If you have SAS Enterprise Guide 7.13 or later, the Copy Files task is in the Tasks->Data menu. In earlier versions, you'll have to download/install the task as a custom task.
Recent versions of SAS Enterprise Guide (version 5.1 and later) use Microsoft .NET 4.0, which enforces additional security requirements before running custom task DLLs that you download from the Web, including those that you download from support.sas.com. Because these task DLLs are downloaded from the (big and scary) Internet, the
A few months ago I released the Copy Files task for use with SAS Enterprise Guide. The task allows you to transfer any files between your PC and a SAS Workspace session, much like an FTP process. It doesn't rely on FTP though; it uses a combination of SAS code,
Even though it's been around for well over a decade, SAS Enterprise Guide was still a hot topic among attendees at SAS Global Forum this year. In the Technology Connection -- the big session on Monday morning -- SAS R&D staff used the conference agenda content to demonstrate the power
What a conference so far... SAS Global Forum is now in full swing, and the two big sessions (Opening Session last night, and the Tech Session this morning) have been packed with impressive material. The attendees I've spoken with have been suitably impressed and enthused. You can view the sessions
Editor's note: this article was originally published on The SAS Dummy blog. In the SAS User Groups LinkedIn group, some generous "old timers" offer tips to the potentially shy newcomers for connecting with other SAS professionals at SAS Global Forum. Perhaps these folks remember their own introverted natures, and they
SAS Global Forum is like a BIG buffet of SAS knowledge, all served up in just a few days. There are so many good presentations and activities, but you cannot fit them all on your plate. You have to choose. To make the choices easier, the SAS Global Forum committee
Even if you cannot attend SAS Global Forum next week, you can experience it virtually via the Livestream sessions. This year I will reprise my role as host of SAS Tech Talks, a pair of live webcasts that feature SAS R&D professionals and their latest technological wares. Click "play" on
In the SAS User Groups LinkedIn group, some generous "old timers" offer tips to the potentially shy newcomers for connecting with other SAS professionals at SAS Global Forum. Perhaps these folks remember their own introverted natures, and they want to encourage attendees to get the most out of their conference
Getting Started with SAS -- a free webinar for new SAS users -- is now available for on-demand viewing. During this SAS Talks session, Stacey Syphus and I review the basics of what SAS is, what people use it for, and what you can expect to see as a new
In a previous article, I described how to use Windows PowerShell to connect to a remote SAS Workspace, run a SAS program, and retrieve the results. In that example, the only results I retrieved were the SAS log and SAS listing (text) output, if any. When you run a SAS
Are you a new SAS user who isn't sure where to begin? Have no fear, because you're not alone. Here at SAS, we often receive questions from people who need help getting started with the software. Getting Started with SAS is the topic of a SAS Talks session that I
Revenge of the Nerds was so 1980s. Now it's a new world order: math geeks and athletes are working together. I'm not talking just about what happens when data nerds observe, analyze, and predict sports outcomes -- as they do in March Madness with their "bracketology". That's compelling, but your
Last week I delivered a SAS Talks session: Introduction to Custom Tasks for SAS Enterprise Guide (click to watch it). I promised that I would share a collection of resources where you can learn more information. First, here is a round-up of the custom tasks that I mentioned, with links
This post is another in my series about creating apps with SAS Integration Technologies, a topic that I'm preparing for SAS Global Forum 2013. In this article, I'll describe how to use Windows PowerShell to connect to a remote SAS Workspace, run a SAS program, and retrieve the results. This
Last year I shared this popular tip for counting how many times a web link has been shared on Twitter or Facebook. I use this technique daily to report on the social media "popularity" of our blog articles at SAS. I wanted to add LinkedIn into the mix. Like Twitter
If you're using SAS Enterprise Guide and you're not using custom tasks, you're missing out! Custom tasks are new features you can plug in – features that weren't originally packaged with the software. (And contrary to the Pulp-O-Mizer poster that I created, they do not come FROM OUTER SPACE. Usually.)
In a previous post, I described how to write a Windows PowerShell script to connect to a SAS Metadata Server. In this post, I'll show an example of something useful that you can do after you've established that connection. Specifically, I'll show how to "ask" the SAS Metadata Server about
SAS Integration Technologies provides a flexible platform to create all types of apps, from simple utilities to full-blown applications. As part of the research for my SAS Global Forum 2013 paper (Create Your Own Client Apps Using SAS Integration Technologies), I've been trying to invent some useful examples that you
John D. Cook shared a picture of "pretty squiggles" on his blog, as well as a prose description of the mathematics behind it. I'm more of a programmer than a mathematician, but I've attempted to transcribe his description into a SAS program. I used DATA step to generate the point
Netflix has made a big splash in the news with its use of big data. By analyzing millions of data points about the viewing habits of its customers, the movie delivery giant used the insight it gained to devise the "perfect show". One of the defining characteristics of the show,
When I travel to San Francisco in April for SAS Global Forum 2013, it will make my 12th time to attend the international SAS users group conference, and my 7th consecutive year. A lot of people assume that I automatically go every year, but the truth is that SAS employees
I've got a new trick that you can use to track progress in a long-running SAS program, while using SAS Enterprise Guide. I've previously written about the SYSECHO statement and how you can use it to update the Task Status window with custom messages. SYSECHO is a "global" statement in
Last year I published an example application for searching your SAS Enterprise Guide project files (EGP files). The example shows off some of the cool features of the automation API, and it's a useful tool. As neat of an example as that was, it had some limitations. It worked only
