SAS Tech Report

SAS® Tech Report
July 2017
sas.com | email the editor

Dear Reader,

Every year I use the Fourth of July holiday in the United States as an excuse for a family vacation. With a busy family that now includes two teenage girls, we seem to be going in a hundred places at once, and a vacation around this time gives us a few moments to take a breath, reconnect and get ready for the second half of the year.

As editor of the SAS® Tech Report, I also like to reflect on the first half of the newsletter’s year. Midyear seems like a good time to make sure we’re fulfilling our mission to deliver to your inbox resource announcements, tips, tricks and new techniques in SAS that help you become a better, more efficient SAS user.

An important part of that assessment is to evaluate feedback I get from our readers, both direct and indirect. One of the most interesting bit of feedback you give me, whether you realize it or not, is an indication of each story’s popularity. Here are the 10 most popular stories of 2017, based on the number of clicks. My guess is if the story is widely read, it’s a good one. So in case you missed them the first time or want to read them again, here they are. Take a look, and then read on for more SAS tips.

Submitting Code in the Background Using SAS Studio
A Long-Time SAS Programmer Learns New Tricks
A Survey of Some of the Most Useful SAS Functions
Visualized: US Currency in Circulation, Past and Present
One Deadly Sin SAS Programmers Should Stop Committing
Discovering Data Science: Selected Topics
Tips About Mapping Tools to Help Take Yours to the Next Level
SAS Visual Analytics Designer 7.3 Schedule Chart
The Distribution of Colors for Plain M&M Candies
Hack 4.20 Using File Functions to Get the Attributes of a File

Should you have any suggestions for what sort of stories you’d like to see more of in the second half of the year, or any other feedback for that matter, just hit “email the editor” above. I’m always open to ideas that might make this newsletter more useful for our users.

Thanks for reading,

Larry LaRusso
Editor, SAS Tech Report
Follow me @lalaru102

SAS Tips and Tricks

10 SAS® Enterprise Guide® program editor tricks

SAS’ Chris Hemedinger shares 10 program editor features that he’s found essential while writing, editing and debugging SAS programs. How many of these golden nuggets of editor knowledge do you already know about and use?

Summary statistics and t tests in SAS®

Did you know that you can provide summary statistics (rather than raw data) to PROC TTEST in SAS and obtain hypothesis tests and confidence intervals? This article shows how to create a data set that contains summary statistics and how to call PROC TTEST to compute a two-sample or one-sample t test for the mean.

Convert all character variables to numeric with macro CtoN

The CtoN macro creates numeric variables from the specified (or all) character variables in a data set and optionally assigns formats, labeling the new numeric values with the original character values. This sample note includes an example (including a sample data set) to illustrate the various macro options.

Top 10 SAS® Functions

Have you ever wondered if there are functions that are popular among SAS users? If so, what are they? In this new Ask the Expert session, you’ll learn more about widely used SAS functions that manipulate character and numeric data and how to work with SAS date and time values. Register for this free webinar scheduled for Aug. 22.

SAS® Enterprise Miner™ learning page now available

If you’re a SAS Enterprise Miner user, a visit to this page is a must. Whether you're just getting started or looking to learn advanced skills, you’ll find a variety of available resources, including free tutorials, how-to videos, books, blogs, SAS Community discussion boards and a number of training options to help you get the most from your software.

Working with the SAS® Visual Analytics 8.1 Data Pane

These two blogs posts discuss the Data Pane in SAS Visual Analytics 8.1. The first post shows you how to have the Data Pane display the data items of your active data source, and how to perform tasks such as viewing measure details, changing data item properties, and creating geographic data items, hierarchies and custom categories. A follow-up post examines creating new calculated data items and aggregations.

SAS® Studio: Advanced Topics and What’s New

Showcasing the latest version of SAS Studio, this Ask the Expert session will explore the Visual Programmer perspective, the Batch Submission, Import Data and Query utilities, and take a look at some of the new tasks. Register for the free live event or watch on demand.

Using Python to work with SAS® Viya™ and CAS

The new SAS Viya platform makes it easy for programmers of other languages to leverage the power of SAS. For Python coders, SAS has published the Python SWAT (SAS scripting wrapper for analytical transfer) project, a code library using an open source model. This blog and accompanying video discusses the benefits of Python and how Python SWAT can drive SAS machine learning capabilities. You’ll also discover a number of additional SAS Viya and Python resources.

From SAS Communities

The SAS® platform and open-source software

Like our customers, SAS depends on open source software. In this article from the SAS Communities Library, SAS’ Rob Collum discusses the benefits of open source software and its important role within both the SAS 9.4 and SAS Viya platforms.

Intro to SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office - Ask the Expert

If you missed this recent webinar, here’s the on-demand version to view at your leisure. You’ll also find the slides and a transcript of the Q&A segment held at the end of the session. Learn how to access and manage data, run SAS analytical tasks, access reports and execute SAS Stored Processes all directly from Microsoft Office tools.

Just-in-time data loading for SAS® Visual Analytics 8.1

For SAS administrators of SAS Visual Analytics 7.x environments, making sure that data needed for key reports got reloaded into memory on the SAS® LASR™ Analytic Server whenever servers restarted was a key task. With SAS Visual Analytics 8.1 and the magic of CAS libraries, making data available for reports happens automatically. Learn more from this SAS Communities article by SAS’ Scott McCauley.

Custom sorting with PROC SQL

It’s a pretty safe bet to say that PROC SORT and PROC SQL are at the top, or very close to the top, of the list of most used SAS procedures. Sometimes, however, a simple ascending or descending sort doesn’t quite fit what we need, particularly if we’re preparing data for printing or on-screen display. This article will present three ways of producing specific custom sorts that don’t follow the standard sort orders.

SAS News

Register early for Analytics Experience 2017 and save

Tap into the best and brightest analytical minds at Analytics Experience 2017 and discover how you can be the catalyst to boost growth, capture markets and spur transformation. Register by July 31 to save $300 off the standard registration price.

SAS® Data Quality update improves performance, trust and enterprise integration

It's easier than ever to make decisions you can trust. Improve performance and trust with an expanded cache and updated address verification engine. Ease integration with the latest database versions, including Cloudera, Hortonworks, Teradata, DB2 and SQL Server. More details.

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