The Macro facility is a powerful and flexible tool, but sloppy techniques can make macros one of your biggest headaches. Poorly handled macros may run without error but leave your users with unexpected results and litter your system with unwanted files and variables.
Have you registered for the 20th annual SouthEast SAS Users Group conference (SESUG) yet? NO? What are you waiting for? I've heard it going to be a real party, so come help us celebrate SESUG's 20th birthday (hmm ... SESUG isn't even old enough to drink). The last time I went was
~ Lisa Pyle and Rob Russell, NESUG 2012 Conference Co-chairs Can you believe it?! In just a few weeks we will all be together at NESUG's 25th conference! We are looking forward to all the presentations and workshops we have planned and to seeing all our old friends and meeting some new ones too.
I chose this Post-It note this week because it reminded me of a MWSUG paper presentation that I listened to and wrote about. Patricia Hettinger presented "New vs. Old - Under the Hood with PROCs CONTENTS and COMPARE" in the Data Management and Data Mining section. I didn't do it justice in my
If you remember Andy Kuligowski for nothing else, you probably remember that he was the SAS Global Forum conference chair for 2012. I remember that he has a wonderful sense of humor, which he used more than once during his Hands on Workshop at the MidWest SAS Users Group conference
You may recall that I am a novice SAS user - I've been using SAS for about two years now and work for Canada's largest pediatric hospital as a database administrator and data analyst. In April, during SAS Global Forum 2012, I wrote my first blog post on the SAS Users
Chris Hemedinger is not the only person who’s excited about the capabilities of SAS Enterprise Guide. Tom Miron, from Systems Seminar Consultants, a SAS author with more than 35 years of SAS experience, shared some great advice for using SAS Enterprise Guide.
There are five short, simple, quick rules to help you take advantage of indexes. An index lets you retrieve information from SAS data sets or tables. And according to Kirk Paul Lafler, if you keep these rules in mind, your information retrieval will be more efficient. Lafler is the Senior
Are you just starting out in your career? What if you think you’ve been around the block and there is nothing new you can do in your career? Everyone has their own perspective on what career planning is, but Bill Donovan from OckhamSource has a plan to help SAS users make a career
Every fall (fall in the US, that is), I try to attend as many SAS Users Groups events as humanly possible. This year, I’m starting with the MidWest SAS Users Groups conference in Minneapolis, then SouthEast SAS Users Group conference in Durham, NC (my home base) and finishing the season
“It’s the age of the search engine! I remember people ‘Yahoo!’ing during the late 90's and ‘Google’ing till the late 2k's and now ‘Bing’ing. I just wondered, ‘Why not SAS?’” wrote Pramod. R on his blog SASopedia. This was the beginning of a quest and a MidWest SAS Users Groups
There are times when programmers need to know the source of the data sets used in a program. This macro, designed by Prasanna Murugesan and Sushant Thakare from Quintiles Inc., will help you extract the lib names from various programs and put them in an Excel file.
So, here we are – back to our normal routines of school, work is in full-swing, and the Toronto Area Users Group (TASS) starts up again. I really wish everything else started off this fall as well as TASS did – talk about an exceptional group of presenters, talks and people!
I know that for every SAS user event there are many people who aren't able to attend or who have to choose between two or more great sessions. So a couple of days ago, I started a discussion on several SAS users LinkedIn groups asking those of you who are attending SAS Users Groups
As summer comes to an end, I find myself getting excited about some of the regional user group conferences that take place every fall. This year, I’ll be presenting a paper at WUSS (Western Users of SAS Software) in Long Beach, CA, in early September. About one week later, I’m
It’s that time of year again! The leaves are turning, the days are getting shorter, and all across the country, SAS users are getting ready for the annual users group conferences. To get people excited about the upcoming events, I’ll be hitting the road—metaphorically, at least—and virtually visiting each of
Unbelievable: It's already August. When I was a child, my mother used to talk about how time flies when you become an adult, and that I shouldn't wish my life away by always wanting to be older than my years or longing for something that was just beyond my maturity
Okay - not exactly Hollywood – but it’s only 30 minutes away – so you could visit during the evening or stay the weekend after the conference to do some star-sightings. Long Beach is outside of Los Angeles and close to Hollywood! It’s not too late to sign up for the WUSS (Western
For all of you whipper snappers (a loving term applied to generations younger than yourself) who haven't been around SAS since the beginning of time - like Phil Miller, Art Carpenter and Kathy Council have - you may not remember when SAS Users Groups conference proceedings weren't offered online. That's right
According to Janet Stuelpner and Joseph Hantsch, the authors of the 2012 SAS Global Forum paper, One at a Time; Producing Patient Profiles and Narratives, patient profiles are used several ways depending upon the 'customer' need.
When the IASUG conference founder and 2012 co-chair John Xu was asked what makes this one-day event so successful year after year, he said, “The most important factor is the leadership. We are lucky that we have core conference volunteers committed to supporting the conference.”
It’s going to be a busy summer with a lot of travel. I’ve been invited to several user conferences so I’m really excited to get to meet even more SAS users, pick up some great tips for others, and wear myself out chatting.
If you live anywhere in the Midwestern United States (you know who I'm talking about, those of you in the 12 states in the map to the right), you must be breathing a sigh of relief right about now. Why? Because the MWSUG (MidWest SAS Users Group) Call for Papers deadline
If you missed PharmaSUG - as I did - you still like to stay on top of the great information that comes out of the conference. I found the list of Best Contributed Papers and decided to post them here for you. There is a lot of other great information
In August 2011, we expanded the scope of the SAS Global Forum blog and rebranded it as the SAS Users Group blog. Our goal was to create one vibrant and dynamic spot for content related to SAS users groups and SAS user presentations. The result has been terrific! Many new
SESUG (Southeast SAS Users Group Conference) is an annual conference held in the Southeast US - typically in September or October. This year, the conference will be held at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel and Convention Center in Durham, North Carolina, October 14-16. According to Peter Eberhardt, SESUG 2012 Academic Chair, the
The semester is coming to an end and summer break is just around the corner, so why should you be thinking about conferences and grant opportunities? Conferences like SESUG provide a lot of great benefits to students.
Chances are you have at least one paper or research project this semester. If you are using SAS as part of a project, there are some great student scholarship opportunities to allow you to attend a SAS users group conference this year. You can present your work and build your
There may be some of you who don't remember this song, but in high school and early college it was one of my favorites. "Get a haircut and get a real job," by George Thorogood and the Destroyers, really spoke to the rebel in me. Most of my rebellious days are behind
“When I started using predictive analytics in 1991, I had a desktop computer with a 600 megabyte hard drive running SAS® 5.0 something,” said Olivia Rud, respected business intelligence thought leader and author of Data Mining Cookbook: Modeling Data for Marketing, Risk and Customer Relationship Management. Technology has vastly improved
