Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarNovember 29, 2010 0

How SAS engines can read a range of data in Excel

Japan has a superfast train called the Shinkansen. The first I heard of it was when my sister visited Japan on a scholarship. Engine-awestruck, we wanted a ride, but weren’t able to get to Japan. Nor, did we know the language. (With over 5000 kanjis, it took my sister 3

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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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Chris HemedingerNovember 24, 2010 0

Calculating the UTC offset in your SAS session

Update 25Nov2010: I've updated this example to correct the code so that it works correctly for positive UTC offsets. Thanks to Bruno Müller, my colleague at SAS, for finding my mistakes. One of my SAS colleagues was recently working on a project where she had to create reports that include

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Chris HemedingerNovember 23, 2010 0

Five strategies to eliminate passwords from your SAS programs

Many people mistakenly assume that just because you want to use a SAS program to access a protected resource (such as a database table), you must include the credentials for the resource inside your program. Few things cause a database administrator to lose more sleep than coming across this within

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Chris HemedingerNovember 22, 2010 0

Process Explorer: tools for the SAS admin on Windows

It was over two years ago that I shared the tip of using Process Explorer to look under the covers at which SAS processes were running on your Windows environment. Process Explorer recently received a refresh, and it's worth downloading the new version. (Yes, it's free.) If you want to

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Programming Tips

SAS JediNovember 19, 2010 0

Jedi SAS Tricks: Custom PDF Bookmarks

I was building a nice little PDF report the other day.  I love the way ODS PDF replicates the SAS Results window navigation structure as PDF bookmarks, but... I'd much rather write the text for the bookmarks myself.  So, I decided to "use the SAS" and make ODS do my

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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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Chris HemedingerNovember 16, 2010 0

Look before you buy: peek at your data details before opening

Are you afraid of big commitments? Do you like to shop around thoroughly before making a purchase decision? I can't help you with most of Life's Big Choices, but I can help you in one way: I can show you how to learn more about your data set before you

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerNovember 10, 2010 0

An "Enterprise Guide" in a parallel universe

Dear Readers, You might visit this blog for many reasons, chief among them to learn useful information about SAS. You know that I often post tips about SAS Enterprise Guide, and sometimes people go so far as to call this a "SAS Enterprise Guide" blog*. But for all of the

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarNovember 4, 2010 0

SAS—your wish is my command

I love to teach SAS programming and in this blog, I hope to share best practices, tips, tricks and answer some frequently asked questions by our SAS users. I’m constantly learning more nuances of SAS and more programming languages like SQL. Why the interest in language? As you probably know,

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerNovember 3, 2010 0

Peek at your data using VBScript, OLE DB, and the SAS local data provider

Let's pretend for a moment that you don't have SAS installed on all of your office computers. But you've got some great content locked away inside SAS data sets. Is there a way to get to the content of that data, without having to push the data through a SAS

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Chris HemedingerOctober 27, 2010 0

SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1: it's not dead yet

Are you up to date on your hotfixes for SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1? If you're not certain of the answer, you'll find out next week when you might see this message appear: This version of SAS Enterprise Guide will expire on December 1st, 2010. If you've applied any SAS Enterprise

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Chris HemedingerOctober 25, 2010 0

SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3 Tutorials in your language

We've just pushed out the localized versions of the Getting Started with SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3 tutorial. This is the tutorial that you'll see when you select Help->Getting Started Tutorial from within SAS Enterprise Guide. Here is a list of the supported languages, and links to the tutorial content: English

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Chris HemedingerOctober 22, 2010 0

PROC REPORT versus TABULATE: two SAS heavyweights

The question came up on the SAS Enterprise Guide discussion forum: which do you prefer, List Report Wizard (PROC REPORT) or Summary Tables (PROC TABULATE)? And as with most SAS-related questions, the proper response is: "it depends." If you put these two PROCs in the ring with a Google Fight,

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Chris HemedingerOctober 9, 2010 0

World Statistics, FTW!

Yesterday, I was in the #raganSAS audience as David Pogue told me What's New and What's Next in the world of technology. David is a great presenter, and he really had the audience engaged as he talked about augmented reality, his world according to Twitter, and an iPhone app that

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Chris HemedingerOctober 8, 2010 0

Tuning your Windows 2008 environment for SAS

If you're an administrator of systems that run SAS, you have probably already read up on How to Maintain Happy SAS 9 Users. If not, go read that first. Now, are you looking to squeeze the best performance out of SAS on Microsoft Windows 2008 Server? Be sure to read

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Chris HemedingerOctober 1, 2010 0

Export to Excel 2007/2010 using SAS Enterprise Guide

Since its 4.2 release, SAS Enterprise Guide has been able to import Microsoft Excel 2007 and 2010 spreadsheet files (usually encountered as .XLSX files). But while SAS Enterprise Guide can export XLS files (which are compatible with all versions of Microsoft Excel), it does not have the ability to export

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Chris HemedingerSeptember 29, 2010 0

What to do IN BETWEEN dates

I saw a suggestion arrive from a SAS customer who would like to see the IN operator extended to allow ranges of date values. For example, you can currently write a program that checks for values IN a collection or range of numbers: data check; if x in (1:10) then

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Programming Tips | SAS Events

Chris HemedingerSeptember 28, 2010 0

Get Smart!

AnnMaria wrote her latest blog post, "SAS Enterprise Guide makes you smarter", partly in response to my recent post about whether it's making you stupider. From the contents of her program example, I'm guessing that she's preparing for WUSS in November. I don't get to attend this year, but my

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Chris HemedingerSeptember 16, 2010 0

A 64-bit success story: JMP

In my post yesterday about the 64-bit hype and how client apps like SAS Enterprise Guide would see only a limited boost from a 64-bit version, I forgot to point out another offering from SAS that has embraced the 64-bit architecture: JMP. JMP offers a 64-bit version, and it makes

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Chris HemedingerSeptember 15, 2010 0

Should you care about 64-bit applications?

Question: Is there a 64-bit version of SAS Enterprise Guide? Answer: SAS Enterprise Guide is a 32-bit application, even with its most recent release. As such, it is still completely supported on any 64-bit Windows machine, but it runs in the 32-bit subsystem (also known as WoW64 – short for

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Chris HemedingerSeptember 14, 2010 0

Is SAS Enterprise Guide making you stupid?

Have you ever visited a city for the first time and, instead of relying maps to plan your journey, you simply plug your destinations into a GPS device and mindlessly follow the navigation directions? You've just cheated yourself out of a learning opportunity, because planning the journey and using your

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Chris HemedingerSeptember 1, 2010 0

Live long and prosper using PROC REG

The secret to long life is good genes, right? This publication titled "Joint influence of small-effect genetic variants on human longevity" showed up on my Google alerts, and from what I can read (all of it) and understand (very little of it), that assertion is true. The researchers used PROC

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Chris HemedingerAugust 31, 2010 0

SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3 is available

Shane and others have already discovered this. The new version of SAS Enterprise Guide is now available. The latest version offers tremendous enhancements for all users, especially SAS programmers. It includes a new SAS program editing environment that supports syntax suggestions and autocomplete, embedded syntax reference help, and a SAS

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Chris HemedingerAugust 10, 2010 0

Talking in my sleep

I've completed my first day of teaching a two-day course about SAS Enterprise Guide. I'm in Sydney, Australia...but my biological clock is still tuned into Cary, North Carolina time. I woke up at 1 a.m. today and even though I tried to convince my body that it was still time

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Chris HemedingerAugust 3, 2010 0

A winter term at Hemedinger U.

I received this offer in the post the other day: "University apparel just for you, featuring the name HEMEDINGER!" Yes, the offer has it correct. This would be just for me, because I can't think of anyone else who might order it. I regret that I didn't receive the offer

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Chris HemedingerJuly 26, 2010 0

Job security through code obscurity

Art Carpenter offers tremendous advice to SAS programmers who want to maximize their job security: make your programs impossible for others to read and understand. In his published papers, Art (in his tongue-in-cheek manner) presents practical examples for how to accomplish this. I'm afraid that with our new code formatter

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Chris HemedingerJuly 14, 2010 0

Hope for ugly programs

Have you ever inherited a SAS program from a "gifted" SAS programmer? By "gifted", I mean a person who regards line feeds and white space as a waste of precious bytes, who knows that his program is worth the tremendous effort it might take to read and understand it, as

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Chris HemedingerJuly 12, 2010 0

Using Gmail to send a message via SAS Enterprise Guide

You can use SAS Enterprise Guide to automate most aspects of queries, analytics, and reporting -- including sending e-mail notifications with the results. In this blog post, I'll show you how you can send these results and use Gmail as your e-mail provider. First, some background: SAS Enterprise Guide provides

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Chris HemedingerJune 28, 2010 0

Thinking economically

As I mentioned in a recent post, I've just completed reading Dear Undercover Economist by Tim Harford. I acquired a copy of Tim's book at the SAS Professionals Convention, and I was fortunate enough to meet Tim in person and have him sign the book. He impressed me as very

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