Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonAugust 28, 2013 0

A beginner's tutorial on ... line plots

Do you know (right off the top of your head) the simple SAS/GRAPH code you would use to create line graphs? ... If not, then this tutorial is for you! A line plot is basically a scatter plot where the markers are connected. A line plot should only be used

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonAugust 26, 2013 0

A beginner's tutorial on ... scatter plots

Scatter plots are probably the simplest kind of graph, and provide a great way to visually look for relationships between two variables.  But, do you know (right off the top of your head) the simple SAS/GRAPH code you would use to create them? ... This tutorial leads you step-by-step through the

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Programming Tips | SAS Events

Chris HemedingerAugust 15, 2013 0

SAS Tech Talk: What's new in the SAS programming language?

In SAS 9.4, the SAS programming language continues add new features by the truckload. I've already discussed PROC DELETE (which is actually an old feature, but like an 80s hit song it's now back with a better version). In this SAS Tech Talk video from SAS Global Forum 2013, I

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerAugust 7, 2013 0

I18N and L10N: Lazy terms for important work

If you're a software developer, you're probably already familiar with these terms: I18N and L10N. Internationalization (I + 18 letters + N = I18N) The discipline of preparing your software to run correctly in different languages with different culture settings. For example, the software must be able to accommodate multibyte

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerAugust 2, 2013 0

SAS Enterprise Guide versions and SAS 9.4: what's supported

With the release of SAS 9.4 (which included SAS/STAT 12.3 and SAS Enterprise Guide 6.1), you might seriously consider hiring a Chief Versions Officer (CVO). Fortunately, most of the recent versions of SAS Enterprise Guide work with the different recent versions of SAS, so you have some flexibility as you

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerJuly 31, 2013 0

How to use Gmail to send a message from a SAS program

Previously I've described how you can use SAS Enterprise Guide to send an e-mail message using Gmail as your e-mail provider. In the article, I mentioned that you can also write SAS programs that send e-mail messages, but at the time you could not reach Gmail using the FILENAME EMAIL

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Angela HallJuly 29, 2013 0

Sync everything up, at least between EG & metadata

From an Enterprise Guide user's perspective, a SAS library is a library. Whether it was defined in the autoexec or in the metadata or by magic, it is there for them to use with no issues. However, there is a difference as metadata defined libraries do not behave in the

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 10, 2013 0

Six reasons you should stop using the RANUNI function to generate random numbers

Are you still using the old RANUNI, RANNOR, RANBIN, and other "RANXXX" functions to generate random numbers in SAS? If so, here are six reasons why you should switch from these older (1970s) algorithms to the newer (late 1990s) Mersenne-Twister algorithm, which is implemented in the RAND function. The newer

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerJuly 8, 2013 0

PROC DELETE: it's not dead yet

The DELETE procedure is probably the most well-known and most-used SAS procedure that isn't actually documented or officially supported. That is, that was the case before the release of SAS 9.4, when PROC DELETE returns with more features than ever -- including a production-quality status. In his SAS Global Forum

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarJuly 8, 2013 0

Top 10 SAS coding efficiencies

Tried, tested and true -- I’m sure you already practice some, if not all, of these efficient techniques to save resources.  I recently shared these 10 techniques with the Wisconsin Illinois SAS users group in Milwaukee. The conference ran smoothly under the incredibly able guidance of Dr. LeRoy Bessler. I’ll

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Programming Tips | SAS Events

Christina HarveyJuly 8, 2013 0

A Day in the Life: Inspiration for your next paper

Four authors. Four papers. One set of data. The month of August and the 2014 Call for Content are just around the corner, and this seems like a good time to share a little inspiration and innovation. The Foundations and Fundamentals paper section at SAS Global Forum 2013 featured a four-part

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerJuly 2, 2013 0

SAS trick: get the LIBNAME statement to create folders for you

When I work on SAS projects that create lots of files as results, it's often a requirement that those files be organized in a certain folder structure. The exact structure depends on the project, but here's an example: /results |__ html |__ images |__ xls |__ data Before you can

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerJune 28, 2013 0

Building an SQL subquery in SAS Enterprise Guide

Many SAS Enterprise Guide users practically live in the Query Builder. For those who understand their data tables, the Query Builder provides a tremendous amount of flexibility to pull and manipulate data. The Query Builder produces SQL programs behind the scenes, which translates well for database-centric work. Sometimes a complex

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Programming Tips | SAS Events

Natalie MeyerJune 24, 2013 0

Dreading code reviews? Don’t be!

Every programmer may dread the thought of a colleague peeking over his or her shoulder, double-checking code, but SAS Global Forum paper winner David Scocca has offered his tips for making code reviews a painless process.  His paper, Communicating Standards: A Code Review Experience, is a must-read. Here’s a peek

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Programming Tips

Praveen SawhJune 21, 2013 0

Keys to the kingdom—using metadata to build a database

If you routinely import data from external sources, chances are you’ve learned the value in having a systematic import process. In this post, I will begin sharing my approach of using metadata tables to guide the importing of data.

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerJune 12, 2013 0

How to build a correlations matrix heat map with SAS

If you've watched any of the demos for SAS Visual Analytics (or even tried it yourself!), you have probably seen this nifty exploration of multiple measures. It's a way to look at how multiple measures are correlated with one another, using a diagonal heat map chart. The "stronger" the color

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Programming Tips | SAS Events

Chris HemedingerJune 9, 2013 0

Build your own SAS client app with Microsoft .NET

As part of my follow-up to SAS Global Forum 2013, I've posted a few articles about how to create your own client apps with SAS Integration Technologies. This article shows how to use Microsoft .NET -- the same approach used for SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerJune 4, 2013 0

How to find the ENGINE name for a SAS library

One of the great things about SAS libraries is that you can write your programs to read and write data without having to worry about where the data lives. SAS data set on a file system? Oracle table in a database server? Hadoop data in Hive? For many SAS applications,

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Programming Tips

Lane WhatleyMay 24, 2013 0

Be nimble, be swift, be Agile

At SAS, one of our core values is to be swift and agile. So it makes sense that our software development be Agile too. The Agile methodology has been around for more than 10 years and was designed with software development in mind. Today, it is still used predominately for

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerMay 20, 2013 0

Export and download any file from SAS Enterprise Guide

Last week I alluded to some very useful applications of the Copy Files task. This is one of them. If you have SAS Enterprise Guide 7.13 or later, the Copy Files task is in the Tasks->Data menu. In earlier versions, you'll have to download/install the task as a custom task.

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerMay 19, 2013 0

Special steps for installing the custom tasks that you download

Recent versions of SAS Enterprise Guide (version 5.1 and later) use Microsoft .NET 4.0, which enforces additional security requirements before running custom task DLLs that you download from the Web, including those that you download from support.sas.com. Because these task DLLs are downloaded from the (big and scary) Internet, the

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerMay 16, 2013 0

An FTP-style task in SAS Enterprise Guide: user-driven fixes

A few months ago I released the Copy Files task for use with SAS Enterprise Guide. The task allows you to transfer any files between your PC and a SAS Workspace session, much like an FTP process. It doesn't rely on FTP though; it uses a combination of SAS code,

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Programming Tips | SAS Events

Waynette TubbsMay 10, 2013 0

3 of 30: Tricks for reducing CPU time

Do you remember when CPU time was a high-priced commodity? "Today, if you are any good at what you do, the constrained resource is you," says Timothy Berryhill from Wells Fargo. Berryhill has years of experience with SAS on "many platforms and operating systems." He says there are several things

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Programming Tips | SAS Events

Chris HemedingerMay 7, 2013 0

SAS Enterprise Guide: for all of the hats that you wear, you're covered

Even though it's been around for well over a decade, SAS Enterprise Guide was still a hot topic among attendees at SAS Global Forum this year. In the Technology Connection -- the big session on Monday morning -- SAS R&D staff used the conference agenda content to demonstrate the power

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Programming Tips

Praveen SawhApril 15, 2013 0

The list goes on and on -- how to get it all done!

Continuing with our stringed list theme, in this post I would like to talk about applying functions to those lists. So far we have developed quite a few tools that can manipulate lists in different ways, but what good are they if we can’t do something meaningful with the lists?

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerMarch 25, 2013 0

Upcoming SAS Talks: Getting started with SAS

Are you a new SAS user who isn't sure where to begin? Have no fear, because you're not alone. Here at SAS, we often receive questions from people who need help getting started with the software. Getting Started with SAS is the topic of a SAS Talks session that I

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Programming Tips | SAS Events

Tricia AanderudMarch 15, 2013 0

Create Engaging SAS Global Forum Presentations

Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen, has excellent ideas on organizing your information so it is effective and interesting. One tip is “Start with the End in Mind” – what is the purpose of your presentation? What do you want the audience to walk away knowing?

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonMarch 14, 2013 0

Census block maps in SAS

I've heard many customers ask "Can SAS do/use/handle census block maps?" My answer was "of course!" ... but I never really had any examples to show/prove that.  Well, now I do! :) First, you need to locate & download the shape files for the census blocks you're interested in plotting.  For

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Programming Tips

Praveen SawhMarch 11, 2013 0

Formatted or unformatted, that is the question

In my previous post, I began a discussion of lists by explaining that big problems can be solved by breaking the problem into smaller pieces. The solutions to those smaller problems can then be used in combination to solve other problems. In this post, I will talk about formatting and

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerMarch 6, 2013 0

Using SAS to count the number of LinkedIn "shares" for your article

Last year I shared this popular tip for counting how many times a web link has been shared on Twitter or Facebook. I use this technique daily to report on the social media "popularity" of our blog articles at SAS. I wanted to add LinkedIn into the mix. Like Twitter

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