Okay, you've got the leading analytical and business intelligence software at your fingertips: how can you use it to impress your friends and colleagues?

Well, for one thing, you can use it to solve your Sudoku puzzle.

I'm preparing my presentation for SAS Global Forum: "Extending SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office using Custom Tasks". I decided to jump on the Sudoku bandwagon and use the puzzle solver as an example of a custom task.

You can use fancy analytics in SAS/OR to solve the puzzle, but I didn't do that. Instead, I'm using a SAS DATA step developed by Dr. Goodnight that solves the puzzle by iterating through possible solutions: it's pure brawn, but it gets the job done.

Here's a screen shot of the example task, which works in SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office.

Are you attending SAS Global Forum in Orlando this year? If so, stop by the Business Intelligence area in the SAS demo room and I'll be happy to show this task in action.

-Chris