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 Message from Marketing Vice President Cameron Dow
Welcome to another great edition of Insights. Since launching our Canadian
SAS Users newsletter 18 months ago, the response has been overwhelming,
and we continue to see subscriptions grow at a steady pace (the distribution
list has increased by 50 percent this year already). We will continue to
work hard to find relevant and timely content for our SAS user community
here in Canada.
Speaking of SAS users, we recently completed our latest customer satisfaction
survey (a big thank you to all who responded). This year we began running
the quarterly survey to a random sampling of our customer base to make
sure SAS Canada is staying close to the needs of our customers. So far
the results have been extremely positive, with more than 92 percent of
respondents indicating they are satisfied with their SAS software. Also
of note was the fact that 88 percent of users said they would recommend
SAS to a colleague, and 40 percent indicated that they’re expecting
to increase their use of SAS this year, which is a great indicator of how
we’re doing. Our Customer Value Team and customer-focused programs
are one reason we continue to see high customer satisfaction; SAS Canada
will keep investing in this area.
Finally, although SUGI has come and gone (I can’t believe it’s
already been three months!), we’ve started planning for next year.
One of the new initiatives that we’re launching is the Customer Value
Award, which will honour an individual for their ongoing support of SAS.
The award-winner will receive a free trip to SUGI, including transportation,
registration fees and accommodations! Check out the article in this edition
of Insights for more details.
Thanks for your continued support of SAS!
Warm regards,
Cameron Dow
Vice President, Marketing
Win 10 Free Movie Passes!
We want to give our users the highest level of support, and
we’d really like your feedback on how we’re doing. Please e-mail
us at cvp@can.sas.com with your comments and rate us on a scale of 1 to
5 (1 being poor, 5 being extremely supportive), and you’ll be entered
into a drawing for 10 free movie passes! The deadline for this is Oct.
8.
Please let us know if the Customer Value team can help you with any of
your SAS needs. Christy Hobley, Martha Casanova or Wally Thiessen
can be reached at: cvp@can.sas.com. |
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University of Saskatchewan dives into data warehousing using SASฎ
The Office of Institutional Analysis (IA) at
the University of Saskatchewan is developing a data warehouse using the
SAS software suite. In existence since 1974, IA reports the official statistics
of the University of Saskatchewan and analyzes and reports information
supporting planning processes on campus.
Facing increasing demands from the university and its clients for timely
information in multiple report views, IA staff recognized that the tools
and reporting methods used in the past were no longer sufficient.
In January 2003, IA staff took a serious look at SAS data warehousing
technology – a logical first step since the university had an existing
investment in SAS programming on the mainframe and fully featured SAS products
that were licensed to the university. The SAS data warehouse and SAS/IntrNet
solutions were deployed on a Windows desktop, and a proof of concept was
developed. The proof of concept was so successful that IA immediately moved
forward with the SAS data warehouse project.
The data warehouse project officially started in May 2003. The development
cycle was interactive, with the project team focusing on one reporting
area at a time.
By using this method of development, the team’s expertise with the
tools grew as they made progress on the actual reporting requirements for
the office.
The first public view of the project was the release of Phase 1 Student
Demographics and Head Counts in June 2004. This release established the
University of Saskatchewan’s online Statistics Book and is available
at http://www.usask.ca/ia/statistics/.
The project team chose PDF documents as the presentation format for the
online Statistics Book and found SAS ODS and Proc Template invaluable for
customizing backgrounds, text color, font sizes, page margins and document
orientation.
But the online Statistics Book is only one facet of a much larger investment
in SAS technology. Behind the scenes is a complex application environment
referred to as iDat (Institutional Data Analysis Tool), which consists
of:
- Unix servers running SAS/IntrNet, SAS/CONNECT, Base SAS, SAS/ACCESS
and other SAS components.
- Windows desktops running Base SAS, SAS/ACCESS and SAS/Warehouse
Administrator.
The SAS solutions and server and desktop environments have been extremely
effective in enabling IA to efficiently transform, clean, create and load
the SAS data sets used as part of the online Statistics Book. iDat, using
SAS technology, is proving extremely powerful in supporting IA’s
requirement to meet the increasingly complex reporting needs of the University
of Saskatchewan.
To date, IA has observed time savings up to 30:1 (30 person days to 1
person day) in moving raw data to a final report format using SAS data
warehouse technology over conventional reporting methods.
In addition to the SAS/IntrNet reporting capabilities for public reporting
(as described above), IA has made extensive use of the SAS/MDDB Server
Objects (cubes) to:
- Verify the results of ETL processes.
- Support ad hoc reporting requirements.
- Explore and analyze data.
The SAS product set provides access to a public view of the data and serves
as a high-end data exploration and analysis tool for IA staff.
 The Institutional Analysis project team consists of (pictured,
left to right): Clarence Krause, analyst, designer and SAS/Warehouse Administrator
specialist; Robert Schultz, director and project sponsor; Devon
Humenny, SAS/IntrNet specialist, administrator and
SAS programmer; and Mark
Lucas project manager, analyst, designer
and SAS programmer.
You can contact IA through the Web site or
by e-mail.
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 4 weeks prior to date).
Date |
City |
Location |
User Group & Contact |
| Sept. 28 |
Montreal - MONSUG |
Bell |
MONSUG |
| Oct. 5 |
Toronto - ABM |
SAS Toronto |
Christy
Hobley |
| Oct. 7 |
Halifax - SHRUG |
Dalhousie University |
SHRUG |
| Oct. 19 |
Calgary |
Sheraton Eau Claire |
David
Yarmchuk |
| Oct. 20 |
Edmonton |
Cancer Care |
Charlotte
King |
| Oct. 21 |
Victoria |
Gov't |
Gitte
Churlish |
| Oct. 22 |
Vancouver |
UBC |
Christy
Hobley |
| Oct. 22 |
Toronto - TASS |
900 Bay St. |
TASS |
| Nov. 16 |
Ottawa - OASUS |
Congress Centre |
OASUS |
| Nov. |
Saskatoon |
University of Saskatchewan |
Robert
Schultz |
| Dec. 3 |
Toronto - TASS |
900 Bay St. |
TASS |
Customer Value Award Win a Free Trip to SUGI!
The Customer Value Award is a new award from
SAS to honour and reward individuals for their ongoing support
in their local SAS community. Examples include those who: informally
assist their
peers, are active in their SAS users group, and/or
goes “beyond
the call of duty” to assist SAS usage.
The winner will receive a trip to SUGI30 (includes airfare, hotel for
up to three nights and registration fees) and a special plaque to be presented
at an awards dinner at SUGI. The winner should be willing to be profiled
in the January edition of Insights – the Canadian Users Newsletter.
Submissions must be received by Nov. 30, 2004.
For full details, or to submit a nomination, click
here.
(Please note that at this time we are unable to accept nominations for
Quebec residents. In lieu of this, we will be working with
the Users Group executive committees in Quebec to offer something
to an outstanding individual.)
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 Charlotte King Edmonton
Company: Alberta Cancer Board
SAS History: How Charlotte became a SAS convert: In 1999,
as a student at Brigham Young University, Charlotte had to take a course
in SAS to graduate. Now, the instructor of this course was the dreaded
Dr. Scott, a professor feared and loathed for his ability to dredge up
the meanest, messiest and downright dirtiest data sets known to humankind.
Naturally, Charlotte rebelled, protesting throughout the course that SAS
was an unintelligible, inscrutable, arcane program, and that there were
simpler, easier and better ways to manage data and perform analyses than
this program (which was probably written by the pharaohs because hieroglyphics
were too easy to understand). Dr. Scott maintained, to my supreme annoyance,
that SAS was not just the best way, but the ONLY way. Further, he claimed
that he did not teach SAS; SAS was too big and complex to be learned. Instead,
he taught students how to learn SAS through experimentation and near-obsessive
use of the help files.
For more on Charlotte, how she became a SAS convert and to find out her Techie
Tip, Click
here. |
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Title:
Quick Results with the Output Delivery System
Author:
Sunil Gupta
Reviewed by: Lesley Harschnitz
Lesley Harschnitz works at a large Canadian manufacturing company and is a current member of the Executive Toronto-Area SAS Society. Please note that the following review represents only the opinion of the reviewer and not that of any organization or company to which she has an affiliation.
Reviewer's
Opinion: This is an excellent introduction
to using the Output Delivery System (ODS). The book is well-organized, easy-to-read
and contains all the basic information needed to get started with ODS. Sunil
Gupta presents the material clearly and in such a way that it logically progresses
through the steps a beginner would need in using ODS.
Full
review...
If you would like to review a book,
please contact the Customer Value
team. |
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| That SAS is now the preferred partner of BetterManagement.com, the Internet's premier portal for performance management information?
Go to www.Bettermanagement.com to explore focused business articles and
case studies, learn from thought-leading seminars and interviews and solve
critical business management.
That SAS has a product "Bridge for ESRI"?
With this extension to ArcGIS, you can create maps and interactive presentations
that show relationships and provide answers that were previously hidden.
You can link tabular data in SAS with spatial data in ArcGIS so that queries
can consider spatial proximities as part of the analysis. Read more
That SAS, when compared with SPSS, has a much higher percentage of use in jobs that require analytic software skills?
If you are currently a student, learning SAS would be a big
help in finding a job after graduation. SAS’ Global Academic
Initiative team polled various job sites around the world to create
the following spreadsheet.
You can easily find out
whats new in SAS 9.1 from new products to updates and enhancements.
Go to the SAS 9 link from our support.sas.com website.
For details on all of SAS' products and solutions, click here
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September 21st - 24th
- SAS Data Quality Breakfast Seminars - Vancouver, Toronto,
Ottawa and Montreal 8:00-10:30
The SAS Data Quality Breakfast Seminars -- featuring
keynote speaker Andreas
Bitterer, VP, Enterprise Analytic Strategies, META Group™ --
will provide you with a rare opportunity to hear valuable thought
leadership around the issue of data quality. Click
here for
more information and to register.
Oct. 13, 14,
15, 19 - IT ManagementSeminar Series Toronto,
Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary
Invite your IT Managers/Executives along to hear about how The
SAS® Intelligence Value Chain can Deliver Intelligence from today's complex
IT environments. For more information, click
here.
Thursday, October
7th - SAS Breakthrough Tour Webcast – 1:00-2:30
pm ET
 Can't make it to the SAS Breakthrough Tour 2004? Let us bring it to you!
Spotlight
on SAS®9 - Discover how
you can achieve even greater success, see the inner workings of SAS®9
and learn what its enhancements mean for you.
October 18 - 20 GTEC WEEK
Ottawa Congress Centre and Westin Hotel
Canada’s unique multifaceted
learning and networking event for public sector IT professionals. GTEC
WEEK showcases leading edge expertise and
technology solutions that are driving government online solutions
across Canada, and around the world. Visit SAS at booth 2022!
November 14 17, NorthEast
SAS® Users
Group - Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, Baltimore's Inner Harbor
NorthEast
SAS® Users Group – points of interest include:
- Papers on SAS system topics.
- Hands-on workshops.
- The latest SAS products and services.
- Discounts on SAS publications.
For more information, go to the following link: http://www.nesug.org/
October 20-22, Las Vegas
- BetterManagement LIVE WorldWide Business Conference
Discover how other decision makers achieve real improvements, act on accurate
information, make better decisions and lead with confidence.
For more information, click
here.
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SAS leads data mining and data warehousing access tools markets TORONTO,
ON (August 9, 2004) – SAS, a leader in business intelligence, today
announced that, according to two separate reports* from IDC – a
leading provider of global IT research and advice – SAS is the
number one vendor in the data mining and data warehousing access tools
markets. SAS has one of the broadest business intelligence portfolios – from
data warehousing, reporting, and analytic applications to advanced analytics,
such as text mining.
For full story, click
here.
ENVIRONMENT CANADA BREATHES EASIER TORONTO
SAS® Ensures Quality Data for Atmospheric Chemistry Studies
Few things are as important as the air we breathe. And
since no one is immune to the effects of air pollution, it’s
important to understand air quality levels around the world. In Canada,
the Air Quality Research Branch (AQRB) of Environment Canada counts
on SAS to help measure and analyze trace gases in the atmosphere and
to determine the impact of human activities on air quality. Read more
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Name That Photo contest - Congratulations to Igor Chemiakine who was the first person to send in a response to the Name That Photo contest.
The picture at the top of the last newsletter was
BCE Place in Toronto. This landmark is located in the heart of the financial
district, and is home to the world's most prestigious financial, commercial
and legal firms, as well as the Hockey Hall of Fame. Bounded by Bay, Wellington,
Yonge and Front Streets, the 5 1/2 acre, 2.6 million square foot complex
combines two architecturally stunning office towers with Toronto's oldest
intact streetscape, including the award-winning Allen Lambert Galleria
- a six storey pedestrian thoroughfare resplendent in light and glass.
Be the first to tell us where the picture at the top of this
newsletter is and win a prize!!! E-mail your guess to cvp@can.sas.com.
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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JC Raymond started using SAS in 1981; he has worked with SAS in
Montreal as an instructor and consultant for about four years, teaching
SAS basics and consulting in ETL and data quality. Previous to working
with SAS, JC worked in several industries: surveying and geodesy, mining,
aerospace engineering, mainframe systems performance and capacity, etc. 
