Automating SAS variable labels creation
SAS' Leonid Batkhan shows you how to automate creation of SAS variable labels so tables and reports are easier to read.
Tag: tips & techniques
Shifting a date by a given number of workdays
This blog post demonstrates process and SAS coding techniques to shift dates by a given number of workdays accounting for weekends and holidays.
Make the most of SAS Global Forum with the session catalog
When I attend a conference, one of the first things I do is look at the agenda. This gives me a good overview of how my time will be spent. The next thing I do is find the detailed breakdown of sessions, so I can start building out my own
How to compare SAS data tables for common/uncommon columns
SAS' Leonid Batkhan shows you how to compare SAS data sets that include common and uncommon columns. You'll learn how to check mark commonalities and color-code differences in data tables side-by-side columns and add a comments field to see greater detail.
Gifts to give the SAS fan in your life
If you’re like me, you struggle to buy gifts. Most folks in my inner circle already have everything they need and most of what they want. Most folks, that is, except the tech-lovers. That’s because there’s always something new on the horizon. There’s always a new gadget or program. Or
How to create checklist tables in SAS®
Leonid Batkhan shows you easy ways to create a checklist table in SAS software.
The Little SAS Book 6.0: The best-selling SAS book gets even better
Find out about the changes and enhancements to the best-selling book, The Little SAS Book.
Top 8 Global English Guidelines
The SAS Global Forum 2020 call for content is open until Sept. 30, 2019. Are you thinking of submitting a paper? If so, we have a few tips adapted from The Global English Style Guide that will help your paper shine. By following Global English guidelines, your writing will be
A DATA step compiler trick to get the record count
Years ago I saw a line of SAS code that was really puzzling. It was a statement that started with: if 0 then … ; What? This was a statement that would always be evaluated as false. Why would anyone write such a statement? Recently, I was discussing with a
Summer reading – Book recommendations from SAS Press authors
One of my favorite parts of summer is a relaxing weekend by the pool. Summer is the time I get to finally catch up on my reading list, which has been building over the year. So, if expanding your knowledge is a goal of yours this summer, SAS Press has
Finding n-th instance of a substring within a string
"There's a way to do it better - find it." - Thomas A. Edison When it comes to SAS coding, this quote by Thomas A. Edison is my best advisor. Time permitting, I love finding better ways of implementing SAS code. But what code feature means “better” – brevity, clarity
Understanding Item Response Theory with SAS
What is Item Response Theory? Item Response Theory (IRT) is a way to analyze responses to tests or questionnaires with the goal of improving measurement accuracy and reliability. A common application is in testing a student’s ability or knowledge. Today, all major psychological and educational tests are built using IRT.
Deploying the Full SAS Viya Stack in Kubernetes
This article is a follow-on to a recent post from Jeff Owens, Getting started with SAS Containers. In that post, Jeff discussed building and running a single container for a SAS Viya runtime/IDE. Today we will go through how to build and run the full SAS Viya stack - visual
SAS or Python? Why not use both? Using Python functions inside SAS programs
Two sayings I’ve heard countless times throughout my life are “Work smarter, not harder,” and “Use the best tool for the job.” If you need to drive a nail, you pick up a hammer, not a wrench or a screwdriver. In the programming world, this could mean using an existing
Big data in business analytics: Talking about the analytics process model
Interested in making business decisions with big data analytics? Our Wiley SAS Business Series book Profit Driven Business Analytics: A Practitioner’s Guide to Transforming Big Data into Added Value by Bart Baesens, Wouter Verbeke, and Cristian Danilo Bravo Roman has just the information you need to learn how to use
Happy National Limerick Day from SAS Press!
May 12th is #NationalLimerickDay! If you saw our Valentine’s Day poem, you know we at SAS Press love creating poems and fun rhymes, so check out our limericks below! So, what’s a limerick? National Limerick Day is observed each year on May 12th and honors the birthday of the famed
Five key security features in the SAS Visual Analytics app
App security is at the top of mind for just about everybody – users, IT folks, business executives. Rightfully so. Mobile apps and the devices on which they reside tend to travel around, without any physical boundaries that encompass the traditional desktop computers. In chatting with folks who are evaluating
Making the most of the ODS Excel destination
As a SAS programmer, you are asked to do many things with your data -- reading, writing, calculating, building interfaces, and occasionally sending data outside of SAS. One of the most popular outputs you may be tasked with creating is likely a Microsoft Excel workbook. Have you ever heard, “just
Moving from natural language processing to natural language understanding
Imagine a world where satisfying human-computer dialogues exist. With the resurgence of interest in natural language processing (NLP) and understanding (NLU) – that day may not be far off. In order to provide more satisfying interactions with machines, researchers are designing smart systems that use artificial intelligence (AI) to develop
Launching the Developers Community in SAS Communities
As word spreads that SAS integrates with open source technologies, people are beginning to explore how to connect, interact with, and use SAS in new ways. More and more users are examining the possibilities and with this comes questions like: How do I code A, integrate B, and accomplish C?
Dividing by zero with SAS
Whether you are a strong believer in the power of dividing by zero, agnostic, undecided, a supporter, denier or anything in between and beyond, this blog post will bring all to a common denominator. History of injustice For how many years have you been told that you cannot divide by
Getting started with SAS Containers
As of December 2018, any customer with a valid SAS Viya order is able to package and deploy their SAS Viya software in Docker containers. SAS has provided a fully documented and supported project (or “recipe”) for easily building these containers. So how can you start? You can simply stop
How to conditionally terminate a SAS batch flow process in UNIX/Linux
In automated production (or business operations) environments, we often run SAS job flows in batch mode and on schedule. SAS job flow is a collection of several inter-dependent SAS programs executed as a single process. In my earlier posts, Running SAS programs in batch under Unix/Linux and Let SAS write
How to split a raw file or a data set into many external raw files
Recently, I worked on a cybersecurity project that entailed processing a staggering number of raw text files about web traffic. Millions of rows had to be read and parsed to extract variable values. The problem was complicated by the varying records composition. Each external raw file was a collection of
Authentication to SAS Viya: a couple of approaches
In my blog series regarding SAS REST APIs (you can read all of my posts on this topic here) I outlined how to integrate SAS analytical capabilities into applications. I detailed how to construct REST calls, build body parameters and interpret the responses. I've not yet covered authentication for the
Simplify data preparation using SAS data templates
My New Year's resolution: “Unclutter your life” and I hope this post will help you do the same. Here I share with you a data preparation approach and SAS coding technique that will significantly simplify, unclutter and streamline your SAS programming life by using data templates. Dictionary.com defines template as
How to use SAS® Viya® and R for dynamic data selection
In their new book, SAS Viya: the R Perspective, Kevin Smith and Xiangxiang Meng provide an overview of using R with the SAS Viya platform. Read on to see how R programmers can use CAS.
Deep learning for numerical analysis explained
Deep learning (DL) is a subset of neural networks, which have been around since the 1960’s. Computing resources and the need for a lot of data during training were the crippling factor for neural networks. But with the growing availability of computing resources such as multi-core machines, graphics processing units
SAS administrators tip: Automatically deleting old SAS logs
SAS batch jobs can generate many log files that accumulate over time. In this post, we present a SAS program that cleans up old log files on your system.
Running SAS programs in batch under Unix/Linux
While SAS program development is usually done in an interactive SAS environment (SAS Enterprise Guide, SAS Display Manager, SAS Studio, etc.), when it comes to running SAS programs in a production or operations environment, it is routinely done in batch mode. Why run SAS programs in batch mode? First and