+Chris Hemedinger is the manager of SAS Online Communities. Since 1993, Chris has worked for SAS as an author, a software developer, an R&D manager and a consultant. Inexplicably, Chris is still coasting on the limited fame he earned as an author of SAS For Dummies. He also hosts the SAS Tech Talk webcasts each year from SAS Global Forum, connecting viewers with smart people from SAS R&D and the impressive work that they do.
When I was a teenager in the 1980s I purchased my first computer: a TI-99/4A. (Wow, TI's version numbers are more confusing than ours!) I had several friends who had other brands of computers, including the TRS-80 (affectionately known as the "trash 80") and the Commodore 64. Despite our divisions
On this blog, I've delivered a few tips about using SAS formats to stratify your data values "in place" without having to actually change your data. The most recent example addressed date and datetime variables. My previous examples included simple SAS programs that you can run in SAS display manager
Rick posted a tip today about using abbreviations in the SAS program editor window (often referred to as the "enhanced editor"). Defining abbreviations is a great way to save keystrokes and re-use "templates" of code that you've squirreled away. (One of Rick's readers also picked up on the tip, and
I've been working with date-time data on a recent project, and I've come across a few SAS programs that have "opportunity for improvement" when it comes time to create reports. (Or maybe I haven't, and I contrived this entire blog post so that I could reference one of my favorite
You can still get a paper proposal in for SAS Global Forum 2012. All you need is an idea. And probably some data. And also, some techniques for analyzing that data. Oh, and some conclusions would be helpful as well. I know: you are a busy person! You might not
The popular mailing list for the SAS user community hits a milestone this weekend by turning 25. 25 is often referred to as the "silver anniversary", but for a quarter century SAS users have found gold among the messages in this list, which feature everything from questions and answers about
Celebrity fame (I'm told) is overrated. Do you really want hordes of people to recognize you in the shopping mall or while you wait at a red light? Of course you don't. And that's why I advise you to never win the American Idol competition (nor should you lose with
This blog post is a "mashup" of a couple of my previous posts, combining the lessons to create something brand new that I hope you will find useful. First, let's review what we know: SAS Enterprise Guide supports a scriptable object model, which allows you to write scripts or programs
Within the SAS documentation there must be thousands of unique words. But ten words occur more than any others within the SAS documentation corpus: SAS, data, statement, option, set, value, variable, PROC, model, table. This is according to one of our staff terminologists, Vicki Leary, who helps to keep our use of these words consistent and
What is the best way to organize your SAS work in a SAS Enterprise Guide project? There are no project templates or enforced structure, really, but isn't there a best practice? I don't have a single prescription for the best project organization. I believe that it depends on the nature
