Right now I'm packing up my materials for SAS Global Forum. It's actually a lot easier than it used to be. My first SAS conference was SUGI 21 (1996), and we didn't have personal laptop computers or USB drives or fast network connections. Machines were staged weeks ahead of time
64-bit computing has arrived to the mainstream desktop (and even laptops). Can you even buy a 32-bit Windows PC anymore? I mean from a store (not a garage sale)? At work, I've just been issued a shiny new Windows box with the 64-bit edition of Microsoft Vista installed on it.
Useful charts can serve to persuade an audience of certain "truths", because they take real data and communicate it in a clear, visual medium. But what happens when you know something to be true, but you have no real data? Should you let the lack of hard data prevent you
Before it was considered cool to tweet information to the world, SAS users who were hungry for inside information came to rely on a Little Birdie -- as in "a Little Birdie told me..." sasCommunity.org has a nice history of the Little Birdie. The article mentions the "Jurassic period"; does
The SAS output delivery system (ODS) makes it so easy to create great-looking output that many folks forget that you can make it even better. One step that folks often leave out: applying a custom title for HTML output. I'm not talking about the title text that you see as
We recently confirmed (via http://support.sas.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=10&start;=0) that SAS Enterprise Guide does not support proxy servers between itself and SAS servers (metadata, workspace, stored process, etc). However, if the proxy server can be transparent then EG can work through it. While implementing SAS BI at a customer site we needed to access
SAS Enterprise Guide allows users to access files on the SAS server environment. Only one of the three options can be set - either to point to the designated user folder 'SAS User Root', set to the root 'System Root', or define a shared location/directory 'path'. The SAS Administrator sets
So, you want to do two things at once? When you use SAS Enterprise Guide to create a project, the work items in that project typically run one at a time, in series. For example, consider the following process flow: In this flow, SAS Enterprise Guide will run the tasks
When I applied for a job at SAS over 15 years ago, I didn't even know what the company did. [Insert dummy joke here.] Most of what I knew about the company came from colleagues at my former workplace who, perhaps in an effort to make themselves feel better, described
The SAS Visual Data Discovery package includes, among other things, SAS Enterprise Guide and JMP. If you are among the growing numbers who use these two software applications together, you might be looking for more ways to integrate the two. Here's one way: a SAS Enterprise Guide task that opens
No, this is not about a super-expensive set of bed linens. It's about the 1000th thread (discussion topic) in the SAS Enterprise Guide discussion forum. This discussion forum began as a pilot program over two years ago, with SAS Enterprise Guide and ODS and Base Reporting among the first two
In her completely random blog entry, AnnMaria says: I can’t see a lot of people who are experienced SAS programmers switching to Enterprise Guide. Yeah, we get that a lot. SAS programmers sometimes resist adopting SAS Enterprise Guide citing these (paraphrased) reasons: "I don't need a point-and-click interface to generate
As a dedicated SAS employee, I take advantage of as many offered perks as I can, and that includes attending the annual SAS Winter Party. My wife and I have not missed one since I started working here, which means that last weekend we attended for the 16th time. Every
If you use SAS for just one purpose, you might be interested to see some of its other uses around your world. This video is also a great link to share with your less-tech-savvy friends/relatives who ask the question: what is SAS and why should I care?
At SAS, our Windows client products (such as SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office) feature hundreds of Windows forms, or dialog windows, implemented with Microsoft .NET. Because we encourage customers to extend our products with their own custom tasks, I wanted to share some tips on how
SAS recently appointed a Social Media Manager for the company. Check out Dave Thomas' recent interview here. The interview question that must have been edited out: "So, why did you decide to leave Wendy's?" Just like SAS ("what's a shoe company got to do with business analytics?"), I imagine that
Using the proc metalib process to update specific elements would generate errors related to the base SAS Library conflicting with the Metalib referenced library. You can run a libname _all_ list; statement to review all the libraries available to the process. Also, the reference material utilized to improve the process
Today's featured topic on support.sas.com teaches you how to use SAS to work with multiple languages and character sets in a single SAS session. The ability to switch locales and languages "on the fly" depends on the improved support for Unicode within SAS 9.2. Although it's a less heralded component
Today I discovered this thoughtful blog from AnnMaria (I found it by way of her Twitter tweet). I was pleased to see SAS Enterprise Guide in the "wonder" column. Here's the entry: The Dangers and Wonders of Statistics Using SAS.
Jason posted his thoughts on using a netbook with a thin layer of applications to do the stuff that he needs to do: surf the web and work his inbox. But don't underestimate these little machines. Over on the Dell Mini forum there is a discussion among folks who use
Who knew? It turns out that Santa gets more done using SAS. Maybe he even gets his mittens dirty with a little bit of DATA step: data good_kids; set world.allchildren (where=(BEHAVIOR <> "NAUGHTY")); run; title "Nice children"; proc print data=good_kids; run;
You know that game that people play with fortune cookie messages where you add a certain phrase to the end of the message to lend it a whole new meaning? Well, according to this announcement on our SAS support site, you'll be able to play that game with statements about
Within SAS Run the following code (the purple text is the password you would like to encode): proc pwencode in='myn3wpwd4u'; run; After submitting this code (F3), the resulting encoded password in available only in the log file. The results from this example are below, the highlighted line is the encrypted
I'd love to believe that our loyal SAS customers never have to touch a statistical package from another company. Even as I work away in my comfy SAS bubble here in Cary, NC, I occasionally catch wind of stories about SAS customers who need to use data that comes from
From the "how far can we take this metaphor?" department... Want to whet your Thankgiving appetite? Read this blog post from R. L. Burns. The "meat and gravy" section is near the bottom of the post. (Personally, I consider myself the giblets.)
In addition to writing code, SAS R&D developers are very accustomed to writing poems. I don't mean rhyming poetry like sonnets (though we do hear the occasional randy limerick). When a developer wants to make a code change in a SAS product, he or she is required to complete a
I saw an article this morning about the "world's most stupid bug" found in the firmware of a G1 phone. This flaw makes the phone interpret certain keywords in your text messages as system commands (among them: "reboot" to cause a system reboot). It reminds me of that quirky villian
Have you ever glanced through the obituaries and felt stunned to recognize an old friend? That's how it felt when I saw this announcement about Windows 3.11. One of my first assignments when I joined SAS in 1993 was to write Changes and Enhancements to the SAS System Release 6.10:
I see some donors looking at me. At least, that's how I read the last paragraph of this piece about SAS in the local Raleigh newspaper today: WWF, a global conservation group, uses SAS software to determine which potential donors to contact, and how frequently. One recent campaign boosted WWF's
My family and I attended the North Carolina State Fair on Tuesday (weather was beautiful), and noticed two differences from previous years: Everything was more expensive -- getting in, riding the rides, and especially the food. It was easier to get around, because it wasn't so crowded. We didn't have
