Issue 31 - August 2008 - SAS UK - In The Know - Enewsletter
SAS UK

SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS

SIG1: Advanced Analytics

Over 30 attendees attended the Advanced Analytics Special Interest Group whose theme was "Extending the use of SAS Analytics". The half day session gave attendees further knowledge on how they could extend their usage of SAS analytics to take advantage of new techniques and distribute results to decision makers throughout the business.

SAS presented a whistle stop tour of what optimisation is and how it can provide true business value to organisations with Andrea Toniolo Staggemeier from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) then providing a case study of how these techniques are used in Statistical Disclosure Control (SDC) methodologies at ONS.

Other topics that were presented were:

John Spooner

To view the presentations, follow this link:
www.sas.com/uk/events/sigs/presentations/sig1.html

SIG 2 - SAS® for Query, Reporting & Analysis

Each year the Special Interest Group takes an area of the general Query and Reporting topic and this year it focussed on dashboards. The morning was spent looking at key concepts of dashboards such as resolution versus impact, drill through to detail data, tailoring content for different users and strategies for storing data.

The Special Interest Group was mainly looking at the SAS BI Dashboard which is part of SAS Enterprise Business Intelligence Server but it did cover the use of SAS/Graph to generate dashboards and also tools like the Yahoo Desktop Widget using web services to draw content from the SAS System.

The session wrapped up with a look at the roadmap for the SAS BI Dashboard.

Pete Snelling

To view the presentations, follow this link:
www.sas.com/uk/events/sigs/presentations/sig2.html

SIG 3 - SAS® for Data Integration & Quality

This year's session looked at data quality and integration issues from both a business and technical perspective.

To view the presentations, follow this link:
www.sas.com/uk/events/sigs/presentations/sig3.html

SIG 4 - SAS® for IT Intelligence

This session focused on the challenges of managing virtualised server environments with SAS IT Intelligence and was broken up into 3 sections.

More information on SAS® IT Intelligence for VMware Infrastructure is available on our website.

Rob Cahill

To view the presentations, follow this link:
www.sas.com/uk/events/sigs/presentations/sig4.html

SIG 5 - SAS® for Configuration & Management

The SAS®9 Configuration & Management Special Interest Group continued the tradition established since it's inception by being fully subscribed. It was a pleasure to welcome speakers from around the SAS organisation as well as, and perhaps more importantly, external speakers. The customer presentation from dunnhumby [s1] provided us with some great insight into the rigors they have to enforce during the delivery of Marketplace, their standard retail solutions architecture.

Attendees also heard about how Sun's Data Centre of the Future saved a U.S. customer significant sums of money and increased their SAS processing capability. Speakers from SAS talked about a couple of the tools available for troubleshooting and improving performance of the SAS Intelligence Platform as well as how the software installation process has improved in the current release and the emphasis on simplicity in SAS®9.2. This alone would be reason enough to attend the SIG, but as always the chance to catch-up with old friends and likeminded users has to be the real success for events like this.

Steve Rees

To view the presentations, follow this link: www.sas.com/uk/events/sigs/presentations/sig5.html

SIG 6 - Advanced SAS® Enterprise Guide®

Thirty customers attended the Advanced Enterprise Guide Special Interest Group which was held in the Danesfield Hotel adjacent to SAS. Presentations were given by Neil Constable and Helen Cockroft from SAS, and by Umar Farouq from Bradford and Bingley. Umar discussed the use of SAS at Bradford and Bingley and drew some useful comparisons between using Base SAS® and SAS® Enterprise Guide®.

Helen illustrated the power of functions in SAS Enterprise Guide by giving an extract from the publicly scheduled Advanced SAS Enterprise Guide Course, and also showed how SAS Enterprise Guide interacts with the SAS®9 Business Intelligence architecture. Neil gave an overview of the on-line resources and books available for Enterprise Guide and also discussed the Education paths available, including the brand new SAS Programming for SAS Enterprise Guide Users course. Neil also gave a preview demonstration of SAS Enterprise Guide 4.2. After a question and answer section the group returned to SAS for a barbeque lunch.

Neil Constable

To view the presentations, follow this link:
www.sas.com/uk/events/sigs/presentations/sig6.html

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