Programming Tips

Lise CragenOctober 10, 2012 0

On the Roadshow again

Program update for 2013! The SAS Training Roadshow is back on tour. This year, we’re heading out to six rockin’ cities. We’d love to see you there. Cleveland - Portland - San Jose - Indianapolis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ As I prepare for my stint on the SAS Programming "Roadshow," it occurs to

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarOctober 1, 2012 0

Three must have SAS freebies

"I want everything!" said a student when I paused to ask my SAS Programming 1 class what else they wanted to learn. Seriously! You want me to share everything I know in three days?  The student came back with... "Well okay, what about those freebies you mentioned?" That’s how it all

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Programming Tips

Miss SAS AnswersSeptember 19, 2012 0

Selecting the Second Duplicate Observation

  Dear Miss SAS Answers, I have read through a few Dear Miss SAS Answers blog posts, but I cannot seem to find what I am looking for. I need to extract only the second duplicate from a whole list of duplicates per account number. Is there a way to

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Programming Tips

SAS JediMay 10, 2012 0

Jedi SAS Tricks: FUNC(y) Formats

In the previous episode, we built our own custom SAS function - a masterful trick indeed. Gordon Keener, a developer here at SAS, responded exuberantly "You think that's cool? - try THIS!" and proceeded to demonstrate prodigious powers with the SAS by using a custom function in a custom informat

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Programming Tips

SAS JediMay 3, 2012 0

Jedi SAS Tricks – Roll Your Own Function

A SAS user (who lives in the the US) emailed me a question about SAS functions. He was reading UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) datetime values from server logs, and to make future calculations and comparisons easier, he wanted to transform the value to local datetime.  The INTNX() function worked great, but

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarApril 12, 2012 0

Syntactic sugar - 6 SAS essentials

The 25 boys I teach on Sundays loved these cupcakes I baked for them for Easter… the sugared peeps had them completely satisfied. I love my tea or coffee laced with sugar. I think you‘d all agree that it is always more pleasant to meet a nice customer service person

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Programming Tips

SAS JediJanuary 13, 2012 0

Jedi SAS Tricks: These aren't the droids... Episode 1

In the Star Wars movie, Obi-wan could just wave his hand, mutter a few words, and the stormtroopers would "move along".  How the power of the Force makes ridding yourself of problematic characters so much easier! I recently was invited to become an alternate instructor for Ron Cody’s SAS Business

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Programming Tips

Miss SAS AnswersJanuary 9, 2012 0

Calculated values in PROC REPORT Compute Blocks

Dear Miss SAS Answers, In PROC REPORT can I use one calculated (computed) variable in the calculation of another computed variable? In the example below, I’m trying to use the value of the Bonus column to calculate the Total column:   compute Bonus;     Bonus =sal.sum*0.05;   endcomp;   compute Total;     total=sum(sal.sum, Bonus.sum);   endcomp;

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Programming Tips

SAS JediNovember 18, 2011 0

Jedi SAS Tricks: Building a Name Suffix variable list

If you’ve taken one of my SAS classes you may recall “Mark’s 3 rules of programming”, the first of which is “Lazy programmers are GOOD programmers.”  One of the things I love about best about SAS programming is the plethora of functions and shortcuts built into the language, all designed

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Programming Tips | SAS Events

Anne-Lindsay BeallNovember 7, 2011 0

Seven steps for avoiding (data) hangovers

In a production environment, where dozens of SAS programs are run in sequence, often monthly or quarterly, and where logs can span thousands of lines, it’s easy to overlook the small stuff that can cause data hangovers.  Recognize any of these? A temporary data set finds its way into subsequent

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarSeptember 28, 2011 0

A man called Bloom and my take on him

Wondering about Bloom and what he has to do with SAS programming.  For any learner, he is someone to respect. For anyone wishing to learn more about the levels of the learning process, this is the master. Bloom classified cognitive, a big word for thinking skills, into 6 broad categories.

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September 27, 2011 0

Top 10 sites for SAS programmers

With a combined 62 years of experience using SAS and JMP, consultants Kirk Paul Lafler and Charles Edwin Shipp have authored countless papers, articles, books - even puzzles - about analytics. Over the years, they've pretty much seen the world more than a few times during their travels to international,

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Waynette TubbsSeptember 13, 2011 0

Telecommuting tips for managers and telecommuters

Telecommuting is not always a matter of working from home. Virtual team workers are often located in a satellite office, in another country or are temporarily out of the office. Today, many managers have no choice but to incorporate telecommuting members into their team structure. Mary Varughese, Mei Dey and

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Programming Tips

Waynette TubbsSeptember 12, 2011 0

Be the brightest light on the porch: Efficiency tips for programmers

Kathleen Harkins, Carolyn Maass and Mary Anne Rutkowski, from Merck Sharp and Dohme, collaborated to write T.I.P.S: Techniques and information for programming in SAS® for NESUG 2011. These three women are highly experienced programmers: Harkins has more than 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and aerospace industries; Maass has

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Programming Tips

Miss SAS AnswersJuly 8, 2011 0

Dear Miss SAS Answers: Help me see my ODS output

Dear Miss SAS Answers, I have a problem getting PDF, HTML, and RTF output from the Output Delivery System (ODS). It asks me to connect to a remote browser. When I try that, I have a connection failure. I am using Base SAS 9.2 software. What am I doing wrong?

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarJune 21, 2011 0

Is something missing or is it a ZERO?

As far as numbers go, the number zero is rather mysterious for data. Is it something or is it nothing? What happens when you have missing data but enter 0? This topic triggered an intriguing discussion in my recent Programming 2: Data Manipulation Techniques class. In this post I’d like

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Programming Tips

Mark StevensFebruary 22, 2011 0

Sometimes It's the Journey, Not the Destination

Recently, I read Dr. AnnMaria De Mars' blog post "Translating Ruby to SAS (or vice versa)." I found that I really liked it, and not just because she mentions me (although that was pretty cool). But rather, I like the end of the post, where she identifies a key value

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Waynette TubbsJanuary 19, 2011 0

Ron Fehd has SASonality in Spades

The SASonality series is about connecting you with SAS users that you may not have taken time to really get to know. Today, I’m going to introduce you to someone that you’ve seen at the SAS regional users group conferences. As you’ll see after reading his interview, he’s created a

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Programming Tips

Catherine (Cat) TruxilloDecember 2, 2010 0

Weekday Morning Quick-trick: How to Score from PROC VARCLUS

Have you used multivariate procedures in SAS and wanted to save out scores? Some procedures, such as FACTOR, CANDISC, CANCORR, PRINCOMP, and others have an OUT= option to save scores to the input data set. However, to score a new data set, or to perform scoring with multivariate procedures that

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Programming Tips

Mark StevensNovember 24, 2010 0

To INDEX or not to INDEX...

Recently, a certification candidate asked me about indexes and how SAS decides whether to use one or not.  I don't work with supper-large data sets and therefore haven't been overly concerned with efficient coding techniques and consequently had no idea what an index was. So off to SAS 9.2 online

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Programming Tips

Mike KaltNovember 19, 2010 0

Why Can't SAS Read My CSV file?

Many SAS users receive data in the form of CSV (Comma Separated Value) files, and need to convert them to SAS data sets. A typical record in a CSV file might look like this: Jeter,Derek,1995,,234,”22,600,000” Note the following about the record above: There is no data for the fourth field,

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Programming Tips

Kirsten HamstraJune 24, 2010 0

The Ultimate Set for SAS DATA Step Programmers

Are you a SAS DATA step programmer? If so, be sure to take advantage of this exclusive "buy 2 books, get 1 free" offer from SAS Publishing. Solutions for SAS Data Step Programmers: The Essential Three-Book Set of Examples from Michele Burlew features 3 of her most popular books, including:

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Programming Tips

Mike KaltMay 25, 2010 0

SAS/GRAPH "SG" Procedures--Not Just for Statisticians!

If you are a SAS/GRAPH user, you may have heard about the new Statistical Graphics ("SG") procedures that are new in SAS 9.2. These procedures are designed to make it easier to produce common statistical charts and plots. You may have assumed that the procedures are only for folks who

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Programming Tips

Michele ReisterMay 7, 2010 0

It’s the added value that counts

Welcome to SAS Training Post, the official blog of SAS Training & Certification! My name is Michele Reister and I am the social media manager for SAS Education. This blog will be a channel to provide you with value-add educational content to help you be a better SAS user. You’ll

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SAS Events

Larry LaRussoApril 19, 2010 0

5 Tips for becoming a SAS® Certified Advanced Programmer in 6 Months

I had the pleasure of attending Gongwei Chen’s SAS Global Forum 2010 presentation, Get Certified as an Advanced SAS® Programmer in Six Months or Less! As you might expect, Gongwei is a Certified Advanced Programmer. To become certified at the advanced level, a programmer must pass both the SAS Base

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Programming Tips

Waynette TubbsApril 13, 2010 0

5 Things to Make you a More Organized SAS® Programmer

Jean Balent gave a quick 20-minute presentation of her ideas that may help programmers become more organized and therefore more productive. The presentation is a shortened version of her paper, How to become an organized SAS programmer. In fact, her tips may be useful in other areas of your career.

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Programming Tips

Christine KjellbergMarch 26, 2010 0

Two and Half Lost Concepts

As Stacey mentioned in her last blog post, she’s a fan of the television show Lost, as I am too. Often our final few minutes of study group will discuss the numerous theories regarding the Lost castaways and their island stories and sideways stories. For 5 minutes or so, it’s

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Programming Tips

Christine KjellbergMarch 5, 2010 0

Programming Efficiency

In one of my previous posts, I challenged myself to use SAS to create a monthly household budget and I’m happy to report that I have started this process. I have a few months worth of data and have begun to merge this information into data sets. With the combination

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Programming Tips

Stacey HamiltonFebruary 8, 2010 0

All Reported Out

I’ve spent quite a while now going through chapter 8, “Creating Enhanced List and Summary Reports,” in the Base Certification Prep Guide. This topic should be straightforward, I keep telling myself. So why did I score 40% on the quiz? Thinking that I probably needed to delve a little deeper,

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Programming Tips

Christine KjellbergJanuary 25, 2010 0

Divide and Conquer

Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it. -Rene Descartes A great quote to apply to many things in life, including this path towards certification. Realizing that I needed a review, I enrolled in a three day, onsite Programming I class here in

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