New SAS programming features in SAS Enterprise Guide 7.1

SAS Enterprise Guide 7.1 began shipping last week. Of the many new features, some are "biggies" while others are more subtle. My favorite new features are those for SAS programmers, including several items that I've heard customers ask for specifically. I'll describe them briefly here; the SAS Enterprise Guide online help contains more details.

Track program history

This is one of the biggies. If you have SAS programs in your SAS Enterprise Guide project, you can now track your changes in those programs using standard source control management methods.

You can "commit", view history, revert changes, compare versions, and even see an annotated "blame" view that shows exactly when you introduced a change that broke your program.

The program history feature relies on a "hyperlocal" Git repository within your EGP file, so you can't use this to track changes to SAS programs that you store outside of the project. But SAS Enterprise Guide 7.1 also supports integration with a file-system-based Git repository if you set one up using other tools. The SAS integrated menus/tools will still help you to see your program's heritage.

Why Git? Functionally, it fits the purpose. And the SAS team was able to embed the necessary pieces within the application, so you don't need to install additional tools before getting started. And besides, all of the cool kids use Git these days. If you need to work with Subversion or another tool, you can still use this file-system technique.

Smart highlighting in the program editor

Double-click on a word in the editor to highlight it, and instantly see all other occurrences of that word highlighted in your program view. That's what puts the "smart" in "smart highlighting".

It's amazingly useful for finding all occurrences of a variable name, data set name, or an embarrassing misspelling.

Project log summary window

The Project Log shows you a complete aggregated view of your SAS logs within your project; it's been part of SAS Enterprise Guide for several years. The log content is comprehensive, but often difficult to navigate because it holds so much. Now the popular Log Summary view (introduced in release 6.1) has made it to the Project Log, simplifying your journey through the log content.

Project-level Search

The search for a "search" feature led me to create the EGP Search tool, which has been very popular among SAS Enterprise Guide "power users". Now there is a built-in search feature that allows you to search the current project for text in any project element, including tasks, programs, and results.

(The built-in search feature doesn't search multiple project files, so my EGP Search tool isn't obsolete just yet.)

SAS Macro Variable viewer and SAS System Options viewer

Many SAS programmers have downloaded these two custom tasks from this blog. The macro variable viewer shows all of the current SAS macro variables and their values, plus allows a quick method to evaluate macro expressions. The system options viewer shows all of the SAS options, with their values and meanings. Thanks to the popularity of the custom tasks, the R&D team agreed to include them in the main application. These tasks are now "first-class citizens" on the Tools menu.

But wait, there's more

I look forward to discussing more new features, including: integration with SAS Studio tasks, with SAS Visual Analytics and the LASR server, some new UI niceties for finding tasks and organizing Favorites, and much more. It's a big release with plenty of treasures to find -- and even I'm still discovering them!