While at SAS, I hope to get the opportunity to talk with all of the SAS icons. I’ve had the privilege to meet many. Before the SAS winter break, I had the privilege to talk with another: Michael Raithel. At SAS® Global Forum 2010, Raithel will be presenting the Tuesday
Check out AnnMaria's blog covering what she's learned by being on the bleeding edge: using SAS 9.2 for Windows x64 on a Win7 virtual machine. Also, her short primer on XPT files makes me want to add some native capability into SAS Enterprise Guide. If your goal is to send
Last month I pointed you towards the conference t-shirt contest on sasCommunity.org. The designs and coding techniques on display were quite creative, and the contest triggered some fun conversation among community members. Now the votes have been cast. And the winner is …self-proclaimed “new kid” Lynne Krajevski. I loved what
Which versions of MySQL are supported by SAS 9.1.3 for Windows? Is the 64-bit version of Oracle 11g supported on the 64-bit version of SAS 9.2 on Linux? You can find the answers to these questions and others like it by consulting the SAS/ACCESS Validation Matrix: pick your SAS version,
The last time I mentioned Accenture on this blog, I linked to their recent survey results, which show that companies are recognizing the value of predictive analytics – and are planning for it. What does that mean for business analytics vendors? In a lot of ways, it means business leaders
Within SAS, we have a strong blogging community made up of SAS employees. Those of us who read or contribute to the blog content on the internal SAS web got a special "shout out" from Fortune magazine, within its coverage of SAS as the top workplace in the USA. The
The National Association of State CIOs has just released an issue brief that has me very excited. “DO YOU THINK? OR DO YOU KNOW? Improving State Government Operations Through Business Analytics” gives an overview of business analytics and includes examples of effective implementations. The brief’s title paraphrases the quote “Do
I've been to a bunch of SAS Global Forum (née SUGI) events over the years. I always look forward to going, because I always think that by being there in person, I'll be able to provide some customers with exactly the information they need to use SAS better. And I
As you use the Query Builder task in SAS Enterprise Guide, you might notice that it refers to tables and computed columns using names that are different than you expect. For example, instead of a table named CANDY_SALES_HISTORY, the Query Builder might show t1. This is called an alias, and
Even with more than 45,000 global customer sites, I often hear SAS users say that “SAS” is a small world. Perhaps conferences enhance the feeling: From the moment you get in line to get your conference materials, you start to recognize people from your SAS “family.” An attendee also described
I’ve spent quite a while now going through chapter 8, “Creating Enhanced List and Summary Reports,” in the Base Certification Prep Guide. This topic should be straightforward, I keep telling myself. So why did I score 40% on the quiz? Thinking that I probably needed to delve a little deeper,
Day one of the 2010 CFO Corporate Performance Management Conference in New York is in the books, and while the day’s presentations and discussions should rightly merit being the prime subjects of this post, those events have been overshadowed by one of even greater magnitude: dinner with Thornton May. Where
Andy wrote in the NOTE: blog that he's stumbled upon a few custom tasks to extend features in SAS Enterprise Guide. He wondered aloud whether there might be more "free" tasks out there, available for use by anyone who can find them and download them. The answer is: You betcha!*
~ Contributed by I-kong Fu ~ AnalyticsCamp is an unconference started by Nathan Gilliatt after a group of us met at a networking meeting in Raleigh last year called Web Analytics Wednesday. The first AnalyticsCamp will take place at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill on Saturday, February 6th,
In case you missed the business news last week, SAS (the company that pays me to write this blog, and the leader in business analytics) was named #1 on the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For 2010 list. Having been a user (and huge fan) of SAS software since
Subtitle: An accounting of accounts which, by all accounts, you should hold accountable. With the introduction of the SAS metadata server for use with SAS Business Intelligence, the role of the SAS administrator became more important. In SAS 9.1.3 a number of new standard "accounts" -- user IDs that serve
Back in December I wrote about the t-shirt contest on sasCommunity.org. Meanwhile, awards season kicked into high gear with the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, and Screen Actors Guild Awards - just to name a few. Now it’s time for the first annual Best SAS t-shirt Award Show, and it’s
Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it. -Rene Descartes A great quote to apply to many things in life, including this path towards certification. Realizing that I needed a review, I enrolled in a three day, onsite Programming I class here in
This sign greeted me as I was driving into work this morning for a routine appointment at our onsite health care center. Appropriate, don't you think? Last year at this time, I downplayed the importance of being the actual #1 company to work for, stating that the "staying power" that
“The ability to predict future business trends with reasonable accuracy will be one of the crucial competitive advantages of this new decade," SAS CEO Jim Goodnight told students, faculty and business partners at a Jan. 15 Villanova University School of Business event. “And you won’t be able to do that
I hate shopping. Going to the local mall is a form of torture for me. But send me to a virtual store, and I’ll happily browse online and likely place an order. Now I can do the same thing, of sorts, with SAS Global Forum since the presentation schedules and
SAS' Tonya Balan answers this question, plus many other basic business analytics questions, right here in the current issue of sascom magazine. It sure helps me, a statistical layman, to talk the talk.
This year the SAS Global Forum group is sponsoring a t-shirt design contest to create the official garb of SAS Global Forum 2010. It sounds like a fun activity, but as a SAS employee I'm not eligible to participate (or more importantly, to win). Still, I can't resist an attempt.
Angela recently posted about how important it is for technical experts to share, not hoard, their information. Late last year I completed a technical review of The Little SAS Book for Enterprise Guide 4.2. Before that I served as reviewer for The Little SAS Book, Fourth Edition (covers SAS 9.2).
Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and a very happy 2010 so far. We’re lucky enough to work for a company that closes between Christmas and New Years’, so it was an extra long break for all of us here at SAS. Along with almost
Today my colleague Alison Bolen, Editor of sascom magazine, sent me this link to an interesting piece on NPR: "Can Economic Forecasting Predict The Future?" In a somewhat lighthearted take on the inability of our economists to predict the future -- or even precisely report the past for that matter
North Carolina law enforcement officials can now track individual criminal histories using a much more comprehensive collection of data, all managed and accessed via software provided by SAS. According to this recent news article, transitioning from the archaic text-screen-based system to the new web-based interface is "like switching between Pong
We watched our favorite holiday movie last weekend: Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. Most who know me would be surprised to read that I start sobbing at about the time that Mr. Gower buys George his—alas, unused—around-the-world suitcase and don’t stop until (spoiler alert!) Clarence gets his wings. One
As the year comes to a close, you have no doubt seen by our many book promotions how busy all of us in SAS Press have been this year. For me personally, it has been a very productive and gratifying year to see three of my book projects become a
Thanks to all of you who tuned in live for my first episode of SAS Talks. If you missed it, don't despair! We recorded it for you and you can watch it any time that you want. Even while I was presenting the talk, we had a panel of SAS
