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With a year of SAS ®9 under our belts, we're pleased to see how many of you are starting
to make the move to our latest release! Why are more and more of you moving to SAS®9?
One of the most common reasons seems to be the new interfaces that we've built into many
of our products such as SAS BI Server and SAS ETL Server. Users love the greater variety of
interfaces and find them much more user-friendly.
Another factor is renewed interest in improving the performance of your SAS and
business intelligence environments - stored processes, integrated metadata and the
management console play significant roles here.
Finally, the age-old data management and data quality issues are getting the increased
attention that they deserve. In fact, Debbie Weisensee and her team at
McMaster were
able to redefine business intelligence (BI) at their university with the implementation
of new SAS®9 technology. To find out more about what other organizations are doing with
SAS, be sure to check out the
Reference section of our Web site.
In other news, nominations for the 2005 Customer Value Award are now being accepted!
While we all have more work to do than time to get it done, it's always nice to take a
moment to recognize those individuals who go above and beyond the call of duty. Please
take a few minutes to
nominate an individual who you feel has made an impact in your
local SAS community. And for the winner, an all-expenses-paid trip to SUGI 31 is a
pretty nice way to celebrate!
Speaking of SAS communities, there is no better way to get in touch with local SAS users
than to join a SAS users group. In addition to the 12 existing local users groups,
two activity-based management (ABM) users groups and a number of in-house users groups,
we recently launched the Toronto Data Mining Forum. This event, sponsored by SAS, was geared
specifically toward methods, uses and general knowledge development in data mining. This fall,
watch for news on a users group launch in St. John's and a SAS users group for the healthcare
industry in Toronto.
We look forward to seeing you at one of our upcoming events!
Win Free Movie Passes!
As a result of your feedback, we've added a new feature to the newsletter:
The SAS ®9 Corner! Thanks again to Kamran Jafry from RBC for this great suggestion.
Tell us your favourite section of the newsletter and
submit your new ideas before Oct. 15,
and you'll be entered in a drawing for one of five free movie passes.
Please let us know if the Customer Value Team can help you with any of your SAS needs.
Martha Casanova, Rupinder Dhillon or Wally Thiessen can be reached at:
cvp@can.sas.com.
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SAS Users Groups Celebrate Alberta's 100th Anniversary
Alberta's two SAS users groups helped celebrate the province's 100th anniversary by
adding some special events to their regular agendas.
SAS users in Calgary and Edmonton showed off their knowledge of "All Things Albertan,"
not to mention "All Things SAS," in a home-grown version of Jeopardy: Alberta 100th Anniversary Edition!
Stampede
C-SLUG (Calgary SAS League & Users Group) met on July 12 - smack dab in the middle of Stampede!
Terrific presentations by Bing Li (University of Calgary), Judy Ng (AFSC),
Doug Dover (Alberta Cancer Board) and Marc Smith (SAS Canada) were followed by a round of
Jeopardy hosted by SAS Canada President Carl Farrell. Interestingly enough,
the "Tale of Two Cities" category was the favorite at the Calgary meeting.
Presentations from the meeting can be found on the new enhanced
SAS Users Group page.
Check out the
pictures for this event.
e-Sug (Edmonton SAS Users Group) also celebrated Alberta's 100th Anniversary at
their Spring general meeting. The group had a chance to test their SAS knowledge and
also got to see just how well they knew their province and their city.
Congratulations to the winning team. Special thanks to Charlotte King, the e-Sug President,
for helping to put together a great meeting!
Fall User Session schedule now available
The following is a list of events and
locations. If you are interested in attending, please register at this link. (Events will be added to this Web site approximately four weeks
prior to date.)
User Group Meetings:
Academic Enterprise Guide Workshops:
To register, please contact Rupinder Dhillon.
| Date |
City |
Location |
| Nov 1 |
Ottawa |
Congress Centre |
| Nov 2 |
Quebec City |
Laval University |
| Nov 14 |
Winnipeg |
University of Manitoba |
| Nov 16 |
Saskatoon |
University of Saskatchewan |
| Nov-tbd |
Calgary |
University of Calgary |
| Nov-tbd |
Halifax |
Dalhousie |
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Richard Massé
Laval University
Quebec city
Richard Massé began his career at Laval University in 1990 as a computer specialist
providing SAS support to the university community. At that time, the environments
were MVS, VM/CMS as well as MUSIC and VMS. PC use was not widespread.
Massé then moved away from the SAS environment, taking on the role of functional
analyst and data modeler for seven years.
For the past year, Massé has been implementing an institutional data warehouse.
Through this new assignment, he has reconnected with SAS and discovered new functionalities,
while leveraging the knowledge he acquired during his "mainframe years."
The products used include: Base SAS (including ODS and macros),
SAS/ACCESS to Oracle and SAS ETL Studio. He also intends to integrate
SAS Enterprise Guide this year as a reporting tool.
To learn more about Richard, including his Techie Tip
click here.
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Sylvain Tremblay
SAS Canada, Montreal
Sylvain has been using SAS for eight years, both on Windows and UNIX. His area of expertise is
data mining, and he's a long-time user of SAS Enterprise Miner.
For more on Sylvain, including his "Techie Tip",
click here.
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Jean-François Michaud
SAS Canada, Montreal
Six years using SAS® Enterprise Miner™.
Jean-François Michaud is an analytical solutions consultant with SAS Canada.
He joined SAS in 2003 and has worked on numerous projects involving SAS Enterprise
Miner in the financial, insurance, retail and telecommunication industries.
For more on Jean Francois, including his "Techie Tip",
click here.
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Students and SAS Users excel with Professional Certification from SAS®
For long-time SAS user Linda Adams it meant an end to more than a year of unemployment;
for Prakash Gurumurthy it meant a job right out of school. As these users found out,
in today's competitive job market, becoming professionally certified can help you stand out
from the crowd.
Read More...
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Using Hash Objects In SAS®9
There are several enhancements in SAS®9 that can be used to simplify SAS code
and make code run more efficiently. This article introduces the hash object,
a new addition to the DATA step in SAS®9.
The hash object provides an efficient, convenient mechanism for quick data storage
and retrieval. It supports an alternate form of indexing in memory, which is very
effective for joining a large master file with a moderate sized lookup table in a data step.
In this situation, hash objects outperform SAS formats, SAS arrays, and SQL joins.
In addition, the hash objects are easier to implement. A hash object can also be used
to avoid sorting very large data sets.
Read More...
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Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has a SAS Users Group
in Toronto that meets monthly
Earlier this year Bill Fehlner, technical training specialist at SAS, made a presentation at
one of the monthly meetings. The group enjoyed Bill's visit so much that they've
asked our education team to present again in the fall!
SAS Canada is building a new head office in Toronto and will be moving in this fall
Check out a
live Web cam of the new building.
You can easily find out what's new in SAS 9.1 from new products to updates and enhancements.
Go to the SAS®9 link from our
support.sas.com Web site.
For details on all of SAS' products and solutions,
click here.
New location for Toronto Training Centres
This fall, the Toronto Training centres will move to our new SAS office!
This move will expand our training facilities to three classrooms, allowing us to run
the courses you want more often. Students will be notified when the new classrooms are
up and running. Check out our
Web site to keep current.
M2005 Data Mining Conference scheduled for October
M2005 will be held October 24-25, 2005 at the all-suite Rio Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.
In addition to the 2-day conference, M2005 also offers the latest technical training in
the industry.
Data mining training immediately follows the conference from October 26-28, 2005.
Seven conference training courses will be offered at M2005. Make the most of your educational
experience by taking advantage of these
training opportunities.
Extreme Performance Management Roadshow
Vancouver - Sept. 21
Toronto - Oct.4
Ottawa - Oct. 5
Montreal - Oct. 6
BetterManagement LIVE Worldwide
Las Vegas - Oct. 26-27
SAS presents the 4th annual BetterManagement LIVE Worldwide, a leading business conference
exploring innovative management perspectives. Select from
46 sessions that address issues
specific to your industry or follow a single topic across multiple industries.
2005 RiskAdvisory Utility Risk Management Summit
Intercontinental Hotel in Chicago - Nov. 9-10
This highly acclaimed annual summit brings together utilities, regulators, marketers,
consumer representatives and other industry experts for informed and candid discussions
about natural gas and electric utility hedging programs across North America. Learn from more
than 20 industry speakers what's working and what's not in other jurisdictions.
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SAS Enterprise BI Server Answers Complex Questions Throughout APEX
Product Review published in DM Review Magazine
July 2005 Issue
By Jody Porrazzo, Ph.D.
APEX's success depends on fast, easy access to information for reporting and analysis.
With it, APEX analysts can design rich healthcare plans that focus on patient outcomes
and patient needs. They use SAS Enterprise BI Server to gain a deep understanding of the
ramifications of any potential change in healthcare systems and to access to a wide
variety of accurate methods for forecasting the effects of plan modifications.
Full Story...
A SAS Canadian Health and Life Sciences newsletter coming soon !
If you or someone in your organization is interested in subscribing, submit your name,
company name and email address to the
Customer Value Team.
Let us know more about how you use or plan to use SAS®9
- Yes, we currently use SAS.
- Currently do not use, but plan to use in future.
Name That Photo contest
Congratulations to Vishnu Lagoo! He was the first to submit the correct response in the
"Name That Photo" contest. The photo at the top of the last newsletter was the Confederation
Bridge between New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
This eight-mile bridge connects Prince Edward Island to New Brunswick (Canada).
It's the longest bridge in the world to span ice-covered waters. Ice covers the straits
five months of the year. A special design was made to accommodate the ice; the bridge
designers developed a 52-degree conical ice shield (located on the pier shaft)
to break up the ice. This ice shield actually lifts the ice flow up so that it breaks
on its own weight.
Suggestions/Comments
If you have any comments or suggestions for future editions of this newsletter,
please let the
Customer Value Team know!
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