Kirk Paul Lafler, consultant and founder of Software Intelligence Corporation, has been a SAS user since 1979. As a SAS Certified Professional, Kirk provides IT consulting services and training to SAS users around the world. He is the author PROC SQL: Beyond the Basics Using SAS, Second Edition. He’s also written more than 100 peer-reviewed technical articles and writes the popular SAS tips column, "Kirk's Korner, " that appears in several SAS Users Group newsletters. Kirk is a frequent speaker at SAS Users Group meetings.
When developing SAS® data sets, program code and/or applications, efficiency is not always given the attention it deserves, particularly in the early phases of development. Since data sizes and system performance can affect a program and/or an application’s behavior, SAS users may want to access information about a data set’s
SAS® users have an easy and convenient way to quickly obtain useful information (referred to as metadata) about their SAS session with a number of read-only SAS DICTIONARY tables or SASHELP views. At any time during a SAS session, information about currently defined system options, libnames, tables, columns and their
Over the past 37 years I've had the good fortune to be able to attend and present at hundreds of in-house, local, regional, special-interest and international SAS events. I am a conference junkie. I've not only attended thousands of presentations, Hands-On Workshops, tutorials, breakout sessions, quick tips, posters, breakfasts, luncheons,
A popular DATA step programming technique frequently used by SAS users is the ability to identify the beginning and ending observation in by-groups. The way it works is whenever a BY statement is specified with a SET statement, two temporary variables are created in the Program Data Vector (PDV), FIRST.variable
After just returning home from the greatest SAS conference on earth, I wanted to share a few highlights from the 2014 SAS Global Forum (SASGF) conference, where more than 4,500 attendees from every corner of the globe took part in a multi-day SAS-fest. For four days, from sun-up to well
The SAS System provides users with the ability to create, store and access custom functions using the Function Compiler (FCMP) procedure. Once defined with PROC FCMP, a user-defined function can be used, or called, just like any other SAS function in the SAS System. This powerful capability gives users the
