My new license plate arrived the other day, embossed with my personalized tag of "SASDUMMY". I used the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles web site to help select the plate and verify that this tag was available. Apparently there aren't many self-deprecating SAS programmers roaming around I-40. If you
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It was about eight months ago that I wrote the first draft of "Setting It All Up", Chapter 15 of SAS for Dummies. There is some pressure to be clever when organizing these chapters for a Dummies book, and to be creative when crafting section headings and figure captions. Our
This January 2007 report from eWeek states that specialized skill shortages will swell IT salaries. According to that article, "demand in the software development area will include Business Objects, Java, [Microsoft] developers, SAS programmers and systems architects." (Bold added by me.) I guess their crystal ball is pretty good, because

Let's say you use SAS Report format, the latest tagset supported by ODS. After all, it's the lingua franca of SAS BI applications, since it's also used by SAS Web Report Studio, SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office, and SAS Enterprise Guide. You've discovered how to use the report builder in

In the SAS BI-ogsource, Angela posts some sample SAS code for updating library definitions using the METALIB procedure. SAS Enterprise Guide users can make use of a friendlier interface to do the same job. Now available for download, the Update Library Metadata task plugs right into SAS Enterprise Guide and
The SAS OnDemand for Academics offering has brought to light some tremendous resources for learning SAS, and you don't have to be a professor or student to take advantage of them. One such resource is the SAS Online Resources for Statistics Education. If you've wondered how to start using SAS
When Alison Bolen asked if I would consider hosting my own blog, as a "spin-off" from her informative sascom voices blog, I didn't hesitate. Spin-offs have a rich heritage in our media culture, and I am superpleased to be a Mork and Mindy to her Happy Days. (I would rather

I have emailed this simple code up & down the east coast. My memory isnt as good as it use to be, so I also have a copy nearby to implement when onsite. This updates the metadata within the specified library (and delete tables/info if it no longer exists in

Joining SAS in North Carolina as a marketer from New York City has been a real eye opener. Language like OLAP, DI, ERM, DPPM and various other business intelligence buzzwords have been thrown my way in a vernacular I am not completely used to. The cuisine and culture are a

Cross tabulations in SAS Web Report Studio don't work with just category/qualitative data. A measure is required. So how to count the number of records that exist in the group? Using the SASHELP.SHOES data table, we would like to count the number of subsidaries that exist within a region, or

I recently visited New York to attend the PRMIA Frontiers of Technology Forum to hear and discuss the main issues that are impacting the world of risk management. While I was travelling, the airline misplaced my luggage. Reliable information, whether it’s related to finance, risk, marketing, sales – or to
Rhesus monkeys can figure out basic probabilities, according to this study. Now I suppose that given enough monkeys and time, they might even replace your forecasting department. But I wouldn't worry. They haven't even managed to come up with the works of Shakespeare yet.
In the UK there is debate forming about how best to target benefits on the most deserving cases without building a dependency culture. For some time the UK Government has been using 'means tests' to ascertain whether a claimant needs State support, or whether they have independent resources that they
Research from a University of Pennsylvania professor and a Cornell University graduate student says yes, according to the New York Times (registration required). Judging by comments on the article, many Times readers disagree. In 2005, when the NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) award raised similar questions, three Southeastern economists turned
Don't forget. Don't miss your chance. Be one of the first to get an advanced degree in analytics. Close to 100 people have already applied!
I'm writing from the freezing cold press room in a resort in sunny Orlando, Florida, where SAS is hosting its annual customer and executive conference, SAS Global Forum. Amid the buzz from journalists arranging interviews with SAS customers, executives and industry thought leaders like Guy Kawasaki and Thornton May, I
Data integration is not data warehousing, says Claudia Imhoff in a post that discusses data quality, master data management and operational data stores. According to Imhoff: None of these is a data warehouse project. They should stand on their own two feet as independent initiatives that just happen to make
The new advanced degree program in analytics at North Carolina State University is drawing a lot of interest. We ran a brief news article in sascom when the program was first announced, and we're planning a longer q&a article for the next issue of the magazine. Don't wait for your

So you have installed the SAS System, and you can check what is licensed with the proc setinit command, but what if something hiccuped in the install. Or your supporting (I mean validating) someone else's install and you need to quickly see what is available? Included below is some 'found'

Even as stated in current SAS OLAP training sessions, refreshing OLAP Cubes doesn't work as documented. Problems arise when specifying special options for formats (like reducing from $300. to less than the maximum $256.) since these are not stored in the saved PROC OLAP code. Also, if you run the