SAS Tech Report: New look tips and tricks from SAS

SAS® Tech Report
October 2016
sas.com | email the editor

Dear Reader,

If you’re like me and you own an iPhone® or iPad®, chances are you recently installed the new iOS 10 operating system. I know they don’t come along too frequently, but I always have the same progression of feelings when I’m about to update to a new version:
• Oh, no!
• Yikes, this looks different.
• I wish they hadn’t changed that.
• Man, this is going to take some getting used to.

But after using the new system for a couple of days, I always come to the same conclusion: “Wow, this so much better. I love it!”

As a reader of this newsletter, you’re likely one of the more than 100,000 SAS users who visit our website looking for information and resources. I’m also guessing many of you have the SAS support website (http://support.sas.com) bookmarked and know it like the back of your hand. If you’ve paid attention, you may have noticed some changes to the site recently.

In late September we launched a beta version of six top-level support pages, which you can access by clicking on a banner on the home page. Before you jump to those initial thoughts of concern I outlined above, I encourage you to check these pages out. They may look different, but they’re part of a continuing evolution we’re making on the site in response to suggestions you’ve made and to better serve your needs. The new support pages focus on key tasks so you can find information more quickly and get help more easily. But you be the judge. For the next couple of weeks we’re asking users to explore the new pages and let us know what they think. (You’ll find a “give feedback” button on every new page just for this purpose.)

I’m confident many of you will come to the same conclusion I did after using my phone’s new operating system: “Wow this is so much better. I love it!”

Thanks for reading,
Larry LaRusso
Editor, SAS Tech Report
Follow me @lalaru102

SAS® Tips and Tricks

How to stay informed about SAS® hot fixes

An important part of the hot fix process is learning when a new fix is available. Good news! We now have a new SAS Hot Fix Announcements board – on SAS Support Communities – where you can get the scoop on hot fixes. Plus, there’s a number of easy ways you can subscribe to this content. Learn more.

Tips for programming efficiently in SAS® Studio

Perform actions without taking your hands off the keyboard. Compare data side by side. Declutter your workspace to maximize precious space. These are just some of the ways SAS Studio helps you code effectively and efficiently. Read on for some quick tips on how to maximize your coding experience.

Getting data into your SAS® Cloud environment

This paper and presentation from SAS Global Forum 2016 discuss how to get the best use out of cloud resources, how to efficiently transport information between systems, and how to continue to leverage data in an on-premises database management system (DBMS) in your future cloud system. Read the paper. Watch the recorded presentation.

Need multiple graphs on one page?

If you use SAS software to create a report that contains multiple graphs, you know that each graph appears on a separate page by default. But they don’t have to. Here’s how to impress your audience by putting multiple graphs on a page.

Estimating nonlinear combinations of model parameters

The NLEstimate macro allows you to estimate one or more linear or nonlinear combinations of parameters from any model for which you can save the model parameters and their variance-covariance matrix. Learn more from this popular SAS Sample.

Let PROC FREQ create graphs of your 2-way tables

PROC FREQ is a workhorse procedure that can create dozens of graphs. In this post, Rick Wicklin reminds readers that SAS statistical procedures, including PROC FREQ, often create graphs as part of their output, and that they can be a convenient way to visualize your data during the preliminary stages of an analysis.

How to protect your audit trail in a SAS® environment

If you’re an administrator of your SAS environment and auditing is important at your organization, here are a few steps to take to secure the auditing setup and possibly audit any changes made to it, all while ensuring there are no gaps in collecting this information.

From SAS® Communities

Identifying and removing part of a string of text

SAS community member NicolaD has a string of text mixed in with her data that she needs to remove. The community shows her how by combining the well-documented INDEX and SUBSTR functions. View the full code.

Importing an .xlsx file into SAS®

In one of the most popular community posts, user thummala asks how to import an .xlsx file with multiple sheets into SAS. Some pretty simple code will do the trick.

How to model a rare target using an oversample approach in SAS® Enterprise Miner™

Even in the big data era, it is still a frequent challenge for data miners to train a predictive model for data sets with a rare or relatively low count of events on your target variable. This tip from the SAS Communities Library provides a fantastic way to tackle this problem.

SAS® News

The evolution of support.sas.com

Given how important the support website is to our user base, we’re constantly looking for ways to evolve the site. We’ve launched a beta version of six top-level support pages we believe will provide you with a better user experience. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Join us for the Nov. 2 Admin Coaches Corner

Don’t miss this opportunity to ask SAS employees and admin community superstars your pressing installation, deployment and configuration questions. If you have a question you just can’t seem to get answered anywhere else, you won’t want to miss this live event.

SAS® Visual Data Mining and Machine Learning now available

Huge performance gains. Innovative algorithms. One in-memory environment. SAS Visual Data Mining and Machine Learning is the first enterprise-grade solution for data scientists that embraces the major languages for analytics and unifies previously disconnected or time-intensive tasks – on the same powerful analytics platform – for quicker time to value. Learn more.

SAS^® Tech Report

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