One of the events I look forward to every year is the unveiling of a year’s worth of SAS R&D’s magic. It occurs during the SAS Global Forum Technology Connection. Today’s show was all we could have hoped it would be! We heard from some SAS software, technology and statistics stars, including Mark Torr, Keith Collins, Maura Stokes, I-Kong Fu and Michael Thomas.

Make sure you check these guys out in the Demo Hall on Level 4:

Dan Heath, a SAS developer, showed how programmers can use ODS Graph Designer to build graphs without writing a single line of code. But if you like working within the code, he also showed how and where the designer stores the code so that you can rework and adapt the graph to other uses.

Maura Stokes, R&D Director of Statistical Applications and Editor of the SAS Statistics and Operations Research News, discussed many of the new procedures in the 9.22 release of SAS/ETS®, SAS/OR® and SAS/STAT®. She illustrated the applicablity for these procedures across industries, including financial services, retail and health , SAS/OR and SAS/STAT. She illustrated the applicablity for these procedures across industries, including financial services, retail and health care. After reviewing the new capabilities, Maura demoed PROC PLM. This new procedure enhances statistical modeling with SAS by enabling you to use model-fit information stored from a number of linear modeling procedures to perform additional analyses.

Jeff Stander, a SAS Solutions Architect in Data Management, discussed how more and more customers are leveraging data inside the database, and demoed data integration inside the database using ETL. In-database processing is a way to better utilize SAS technologies. He showed jobs running entirely inside the database. Analytic processes can require a great deal of time-consuming data movement within the organization. Running those processes inside the data warehouse greatly reduces the amount of data that must be copied, moved and converted – reducing costs and increasing agility. It’s as close to real-time analytics as you can get.

Heath also demoed the newest tools in Dataflux. Data Management Studio 2.0 has some great new tools including a new visualization tool that helps you see the connections between your data.

Michael Thomas, SAS Software Development Manager, demoed BI Dashboard 4.3, which has been adapted to use flash technology – that means you can now use flash interactivity to gain insight. Michael showed how you can easily create your own dashboard. And for those who use the desktop dashboard and travel, we’ll soon release the Smartphone dashboard so that you can stay in touch with your dashboard information, quickly react to information and collaborate with your colleagues. When you get to the Demo Area, look for a SAS representative with a Smartphone promo for you to demo.

I-Kong Fu, Business Intelligence Product Manager, presented SAS Central, a great new collaborative feature of SAS BI Dashboard 4.3. Most people spend all day in Microsoft Outlook, so SAS has incorporated the capability to send dashboard reports to the inbox. A user can now check reports including KPIs, model configuration reports and sales reports from this section. The key benefit is that these messages are stored on the SAS server, so they don’t take up space in your inbox! SAS Central takes advantage of Outlook’s options: When you see something that needs an action, just right click and set a meeting, send an e-mail or take advantage of many other Outlook options.

Tonya Balan, Analytics Product Manager, showed the crowd a new feature in SAS® Enterprise Miner, the Rapid Predictive Modeler. Now, make business decisions without having to always rely on a statistician. She says, “Imagine that we had a problem with EXCEL, you know business analysts love EXCEL.” In this case, Balan used telecommunication data. She’s interested in churn (i.e. the rate of customer turnover). Rapid predictive modeler provides you with presentation quality reports. In this case, the report lets you see which variable is the most likely to predict churn. It’s repeatable and the models can be used in other programs.

Jon Weisz, JMP Marketing Director, presented “What’s New in JMP?” JMP 9 will be released later this year and is already in use by Beta users. One of the new features is R integration. There is also a new JMP add-in for EXCEL, SAS ETS, Multi-Dimensional Scaling using PROC MDS and structural equation model using PROC CALIS application and JMP 9. Using SGF attendee data, Weisz showed Data Visualization with Maps. Data Visualization is a fast way to analyze data and make quick decisions.

Andy Bober, Product Managerment Director of Customer Intelligence, showed off our newest product -- launched concurrently with the Technology Connection -- SAS Social Media Analytics. According to Bober, "SAS Social Media Analytics lets you look at the data in a lot of different ways." This solution looks at both what individuals are saying about your company and at what publications are saying -- it measures how they feel about what you are providing. What a value. As Bober says, "really slick stuff."

Talk to a member of the SAS R&D staff about these and many other great new solutions and procedures for 2010 in the SAS Global Forum Demo Hall.

Demo Hall hours
Level 4, Room 4E
Monday 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
6 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Tuesday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Wednesday 8 a.m. – 11 a.m.