+Chris Hemedinger is the Director of SAS User Engagement, which includes our SAS Communities and SAS User Groups. 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.
SAS Enterprise Guide is best known as an interactive interface to SAS, but did you know that you can use it to run batch-style programs as well? SAS Enterprise Guide has always offered an automation object model, which allows you to use scripting languages (such as VBScript or Windows PowerShell)
Greg Nelson and Neil Howard presented a lunchtime keynote talk at SAS Global Forum, and they produced this video, "Revenge of the Semi-Colon People", to go along with it. The video features many people from the SAS community, including customers and SAS employees. Watch it and see if you know
When I encounter an ERROR, WARNING, or NOTE in my SAS log that I don't understand, my first recourse is to ask my friend (we'll call him "Google") what it could mean. I copy the entire message (or at least 5 or 6 consecutive words from it) into the search
This morning I delivered a talk to visiting high school students at the SAS campus. The topic: using SAS to analyze Twitter content. Being teenagers, high school students are well familiar with Twitter. But this batch of students was also very familiar with SAS, as they all have taken SAS
Yesterday I was in the Big Room for the rehearsal of the Technology Connection, the part of SAS Global Forum where SAS shows off its wares: what's been released recently and what's coming. I believe that customers are going to love what they see. And just about every product that
While talking to fellow SAS users at SAS Global Forum 2011 this week, I'll be discussing how SAS programmers can "play" with social media data that they can access on Facebook and Twitter. I always refer people to my blog for more information, and so I've prepared this blog post
This morning Rick Wicklin announced his (hostile?, nah...) takeover of the technical blog space at SAS. I'll admit that it took me by surprise when I awoke in Siberia this morning. It's so cold here; I can't feel my fingers as I type. This is probably a punishment for the
"Twitter, thou art nought but data." So sayeth the SAS programmer. Many data analysts now recognize Twitter for what it is: a tremendous source of data covering almost any topic, from Justin Bieber's hair to political uprisings to technical conferences to company brands. SAS offers sophisticated solutions to harness this
Many SAS users love "undocumented features" within SAS software that they have found or heard about. Sometimes they can be really useful, and the fact that they are undocumented adds to the mystique. Some users have written entire conference papers on the subject. After 35 years of evolution, SAS contains
In the computer software industry, 35 years is like an eon. I mean, 35 years ago, the computing power that I carry around within my mobile phone didn't even exist all in one place; but if it did, it would have filled an entire building. That's why the recent posting
