Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarNovember 3, 2011 0

Retail therapy the SAS way

It’s mid-afternoon.  Day 2 of the PRG2 class. Students return satiated from lunch. Some slipped into this course without taking PRG1 so they missed out on some basics. I’m trying to explain how SAS thinks. I use slides, draw pix, do everything except break into dance to get their attention.

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerNovember 2, 2011 0

Using Windows PowerShell to report on your SAS Enterprise Guide project files

This blog post is a "mashup" of a couple of my previous posts, combining the lessons to create something brand new that I hope you will find useful.  First, let's review what we know: SAS Enterprise Guide supports a scriptable object model, which allows you to write scripts or programs

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Advanced Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Angela HallNovember 1, 2011 0

Adding format catalogs without losing others

As I mentioned when creating a user-defined format for Information Maps in a prior post custom or user-defined formats can be created and stored quickly in the default format catalog for all Business Intelligence products within "Lev1SASAppSASEnvironmentSASFormats". This is useful for custom sorting, reclassifying or grouping data as well as

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Angela HallOctober 27, 2011 0

Revisiting the starting file location for Enterprise Guide

Years ago and a seemingly far galaxy away, I wrote about how to modify 9.1.3 to start Enterprise Guide users in a different location for the File folder. By default, the user only can access their personal SAS Temporary File. Why change this? I would prefer to use a central

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Programming Tips | SAS Events

Anne-Lindsay BeallOctober 25, 2011 0

SAS Data Step Debugger: Your liberator from logic errors

“I really wish someone had shown me this function in SAS sooner, because it’s saved me a ton of time and effort,” said Brandi Rhoads as she opened her presentation at the Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS) conference in San Francisco.  

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Angela HallOctober 25, 2011 0

Promoting SAS BI Dashboard content

If you are unable to export BI Dashboard Content the BI Dashboard Logical types was not installed on the system running SAS Management Console. Update this by following these steps Run the software install from the SAS Depot (mine is located at C:SAS Software Depotsetup.exe) Select ‘Install Additional Software’ Then

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Angela HallOctober 21, 2011 0

Become super-efficient at starting & stopping services via scripting

Which would you rather do? Click stop (or start) over and over, while waiting in between the services to make sure everything is up and running ... OR ... click one button and go have lunch? Honestly I prefer the lunch option. (And for administrators, the quickest option is always

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Advanced Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Angela HallOctober 18, 2011 0

Troubleshooting a web file upload

Functionality to upload files onto the SAS server (from 9.2 on) is available using stored processes and an html input type="file". I introduced this topic last year in my blog post using the SAS Stored Process Developer Guide sample. Of course, it is never as easy as the sample is

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Angela HallOctober 12, 2011 0

Dynamic dashboard ranges - its all in the data

Business Problem: The traffic lighting (red/green/yellow) range is different for one group/category than the others but the indicator needs to include all group values. Recommendation: It's all in the data. Here is an example. For the Candy_Sales_Summary data (located in the EG Sample Data folder) there are three groups of

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarOctober 12, 2011 0

Bad words in SAS - PG rating

Picture this – a student grabs the Programming 1 textbook, scans it quickly seemingly searching for something specific, and shakes his head indicating an unsuccessful search. He plants himself smack dab in the front row, looks me squarely in the eye, raises one eyebrow quizzically and says, “Bad words?” I

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerOctober 10, 2011 0

10 tips for organizing your SAS Enterprise Guide projects

What is the best way to organize your SAS work in a SAS Enterprise Guide project?  There are no project templates or enforced structure, really, but isn't there a best practice? I don't have a single prescription for the best project organization.  I believe that it depends on the nature

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerOctober 5, 2011 0

Netflix streaming: Making every minute count

It turns out that I'm not receiving the maximum potential value from my Netflix streaming service.  Perhaps it's because I place too much value on sleep. With my monthly subscription, I am permitted to view Netflix content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  In my house I have

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Programming Tips

Waynette TubbsOctober 3, 2011 0

Five easy steps to write your presentation in SAS®

Most SUG presentations are written in PowerPoint – they may even be written in Word first, and then fancied up a bit in PowerPoint – but they are rarely written in SAS. But Louise Hadden, from Abt Associates Inc, had a need to produce a lot of PDF presentations. She

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinOctober 3, 2011 0

Rounding up, rounding down

SAS has several ways to round a number to an integer. You can round a number up, round it down, or round it to the nearest integer. If your data contain both positive and negative values, you can also round numbers toward zero, or away from zero. The functions that

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Advanced Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Angela HallSeptember 29, 2011 0

Updating your global style

Every six months or so I try to find a recent picture that captures who I am and what I am feeling. Loading this into my various social/online profiles in Twitter, SAS Community, Forums, LinkedIn, corporate internal, Facebook etc then take me a bit of time to implement. Wouldn't it

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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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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerSeptember 28, 2011 0

Jumping into Windows 7 Jump Lists

Filed under "Little changes that you probably didn't notice". When Microsoft introduced Windows 7 to the desktop, one of the many usability features that they added were "Jump Lists". Jump Lists serve as a sort of shortcut to not just open an application, but "jump right in" to a particular

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerSeptember 26, 2011 0

The default settings are not good enough

Today, I came across this article that discusses how software users rarely change the settings in the applications that they use.  Users assume that the software vendor sets the default values as they are for a reason, and who are they to set them otherwise? I'm a software developer (and

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarSeptember 23, 2011 0

Few of my favourite things - SAS informats

Australian merino wool sweaters, Russian watches, Swiss chocolate, Chinese silk blouses, Canadian country music, American sweatshirts, English knitting patterns, Californian pistachios, French muesli, Egyptian bracelets, Scottish kilts, the list goes on. Was I born in a king’s family? Not really, much as I’d like to think of my dad as

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Advanced Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Angela HallSeptember 22, 2011 0

Link to a specific section of Web Report Studio

If you would like to link users to a specific section within a Web Report Studio report, there is a quick way to generate the URL. Just send yourself an email from Web Report Studio. A parameter &rsTS is included in the link which corresponds to the specific section selected.

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerSeptember 22, 2011 0

Next time, do your own homework

SAS programming is taught in schools all over the world, including in high schools.  Occasionally, I receive questions via my blog such as this one: Can somebody help me on this? Write a short DATA _NULL_ step to determine the largest integer you can store on your computer in 3,

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerSeptember 19, 2011 0

Measuring the value of my DVD-by-mail movie service

Like millions of other Americans, I recently was asked to make a decision of tremendous importance to my household -- a decision that would affect the welfare of everyone in my family. That decision, of course, was whether to continue to receive Netflix movies by mail, or opt for the

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinSeptember 19, 2011 0

Count the number of missing values for each variable

The other day I encountered a SAS Knowledge Base article that shows how to count the number of missing and nonmissing values for each variable in a data set. However, the code is a complicated macro that is difficult for a beginning SAS programmer to understand. (Well, it was hard

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Programming Tips

Waynette TubbsSeptember 15, 2011 0

Seven truths about metadata

Metadata is data about data. For the purposes of his NESUG 2011 presentation, Frank DiIorio defined metadata more precisely as data about data and data that describes workflow objects and processes. DiIorio wrote his paper because organizations are challenged more and more today to do more with less. Metadata can

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerSeptember 15, 2011 0

Calling Windows PowerShell from SAS: a simple example

As I mentioned in my introductory post about Windows PowerShell, you can use PowerShell commands as a simple and concise method to collect data from your Windows systems -- information that is ripe for analysis within SAS. In this example, I'll show a technique for using a SAS program to

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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

Chris HemedingerSeptember 7, 2011 0

Google Reader bundles for SAS-related blogs

I use Google Reader to keep up with SAS-related conversations on the blogosphere.   I thought it would be nice to share the lists of blogs that I follow as "shared bundles".  If you also use Google Reader, it will be very easy for you to add these bundles to

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinSeptember 7, 2011 0

Loops in SAS

Looping is essential to statistical programming. Whether you need to iterate over parameters in an algorithm or indices in an array, a loop is often one of the first programming constructs that a beginning programmer learns. Today is the first anniversary of this blog, which is named The DO Loop,

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerSeptember 1, 2011 0

XCMD and SAS 9.3: working together again

It's been a well-known limitation for a long time.  When you connect to a SAS session using SAS Enterprise Guide, shell commands (including X command, SYSTASK, and FILENAME PIPE) are off-limits because the default SAS invocation disables them.  It does this by including -NOXCMD as a command-line option. This makes

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarSeptember 1, 2011 0

Random acts of kindness

 Biked to the train station this morning…felt the wind, watched trees waving in the breeze…flew past Highway 403 with trucks whizzing by…felt noble about being environmentally conscious…took the side path to the station…slowed to a halt beside the bike parking lot…opened my backpack to take out the key to lock

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