There are 2 kinds of people in the world -- those who dread change, and those who look forward to it. Which kind of person are you, when it comes to upgrading your SAS software?!?
With most software (such as Windows OS, Facebook, Gmail, etc) I tend to fall into the category of dreading upgrades, because I have to learn a whole new way of doing things. By comparison, upgrades of the traditional SAS software (Base, Stat, Graph, etc) aren't that way! With SAS, your old code will typically continue to work as-is, and there is additional functionality available if you want to use it. Therefore I always eagerly look forward to upgrading my traditional SAS software.
And here are the top 4 reasons you will want to upgrade to SAS 9.4, when it comes to SAS/Graph! (click links to see blogs containing examples of each)
#4 - Enhanced GIF output - our gif driver now supports anti-aliased lines, alpha-transparent colors - no code changes required!
#3 - Easier GIF animation syntax - your old gif animation code will continue to work, but a new syntax is available that makes writing gif animations so much easier!
#2 - Output graphs directly to Powerpoint - this has been a big request from customers for quite a while!
#1 - Use HTML5 to place everything in 1 html file - both the html and png images - this makes it much easier to read in an email, for example.
Hopefully these will convince you to upgrade, and help you justify it to your IT department. If you need even more reasons, I've written an informal paper about the new SAS/GRAPH capabilities in SAS 9.4.
Now, what new features would you like to see in the next version of SAS/GRAPH ?!?
