Have you heard? SAS recently announced a new practical programming credential, SAS® Certified Specialist: Base Programming Using SAS® 9.4. This new practical programming credential is different than our previous exams. Now it requires you to take a performance-based exam, in which you access a SAS environment and then write and execute SAS code. Practical, right? In the end, your answers are scored for correctness.

This new SAS Certified Specialist credential will run in parallel with the current SAS Certified Base Programmer credential until June 2019. So make sure to check out the complete exam content guide for a list of objectives that are tested on the exam!

A new certification guide

SAS is also releasing an accompanying certification guide to help you prepare for the new programming credential: SAS® Certified Specialist Prep Guide: Base Programming Using SAS® 9.4. This new certification guide has been streamlined to remove redundancy throughout the chapters and has been aligned with the courses, SAS® Programming 1: Essentials and SAS® Programming 2: Data Manipulation Techniques, along with the exam content guide.

The new certification guide also includes a workbook that provides programming scenarios to help you prepare for the performance-based portion of the exam. Make sure to also review the SAS® 9.4 Base Programming Exam Experience Tutorial to help you prepare!

Here are some of the changes made to the certification guide:

• Removal of INFILE/INPUT statements. These statements are no longer taught in SAS® Programming 1 and SAS® Programming 2 courses or tested in the exam. Thus, these statements have been replaced with the SET statement and the IMPORT procedure.
• Removal of arrays. Arrays are no longer taught in SAS® Programming 1 and SAS® Programming 2 courses or tested in the exam.
• Addition of the TRANSPOSE and EXPORT procedures, as well as macro variables. These additions are tested and are taught in the SAS® Programming 1 and SAS® Programming 2 courses.
• Updating of existing examples and the addition of more annotated examples that are easier to follow and have better quality graphics. These changes help to improve the readability of examples, and there is a closer relationship between the sample questions in the book and the questions that appear on the actual exam.
• The installation of sample data and the way you work with SAS libraries have been simplified.
• A new companion piece, the Quick Syntax Reference Guide, is also available for download.

More opportunities to test your skills

For even more programming practice check out Ron Cody’s Learning SAS by Example. This is full of practical examples and exercises with solutions that allow you to test your programming skills for the exam.

Not ready for the certification exam just yet? You can also browse our books for getting started with SAS. There you will find, of course, The Little SAS Book: A Primer 5th Edition and Exercises and Projects for The Little SAS® Book, Fifth Edition. Both are great guides for new users wanting to learn SAS and practice before getting to the New Base Programming Specialist Exam!