+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.
Good news -- the SAS program that you wrote and put into production 10 years ago still works. Hey, it's SAS, so you probably take that for granted. But are those techniques from 2008 still the best way to accomplish your task? SAS 9.4, first released in 2013 and now
Have you adopted use of Microsoft Office 365? How has working "in the cloud" affected your integration with SAS applications? SAS product management wants to hear from you.
JSON is a popular format for data exchange between APIs and some modern databases. It's also used as a way to archive audit logs in many systems. Because JSON can represent hierarchical relationships of data fields, many people consider it to be superior to the CSV format -- although it's
I've collected accelerometer data with a third-party app. I've used some SAS tricks to import all of my data readings in a single step. Now I'm ready to create a report of these data in SAS Visual Analytics.
The SAS INFILE statement can read multiple text files in a single DATA step. Use file name wildcards (like * and ?) and a special FILENAME= option to keep track of which records come from which files.
To succeed in any data-focused hackathon, you need a robust set of tools and skills – as well as a can-do attitude. Here's what you can expect from any hackathon: Messy data. It might come from a variety of sources, and won't necessarily be organized for analytics or reporting. That's
Using relative file paths in your SAS programs? Use the new DLGCDIR function to manage your SAS working directory -- even in SAS Enterprise Guide or SAS Studio -- to ensure your programs are working the way they ought to.
"Code golf" is a fun programming pastime that challenges you to solve a problem with the least amount of code possible. Like regular golf, the goal is to use fewest code "strokes" to hit the mark. Here's a recent challenge that was posted to me via Twitter. @cjdinger @SASJedi got
SAS programmers have long wanted the ability to control the flow of their SAS programs without having to resort to complex SAS macro programming. With SAS 9.4 Maintenance 5, it's now supported! You can now use %IF-%THEN-%ELSE constructs in open code. This is big news -- even if it only
At SAS, we love data. Data is central to our corporate vision: to transform a world of data into a world of intelligence. We're also famous for enjoying M&Ms, but to us they are more than a sweet snack. They're also another source of data. My colleague Pete Privitera, with
