SAS Tech Report

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

Dear Reader,

You might not know it by looking at me (I’m rounding up when I tell people I’m 5’8”) but I’m a huge basketball fan. I’ve been following the sport since I was 10, coaching it for the last decade and playing on teams throughout my life, still dedicating my winters and springs to playing in 35- and 40-and-over leagues.

If you enjoy the sport as much as I do, I bet you’ll agree that there really wasn’t anything better than watching the Dream Team compete in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Three years before those games, the International Basketball Federation agreed to allow professional players to compete in the Olympics, meaning for the first time USA Basketball could fill their roster with NBA players. And man, did they. Scottie Pippen, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, and of course, Michael Jordan, were just a few of the NBA legends on that historic team.

Still, I would argue that the most valuable player on that roster was Earvin “Magic” Johnson. Magic made that collection of talent work. He was the coach on the floor. He moved the ball around, executed the game plan with efficiency and put players in position to be successful. The Dream Team not only won the gold medal easily, they overwhelmed the competition, winning by an average of 43.8 points per game.

If you’re a business leader or analytical expert for your organization, you’re a world-class athlete in your own right. And whether you’re looking to overwhelm your competition, gather gold medal insights to help run your business more efficiently, or just want to put a little “magic” into your analytics, you won’t want to miss Analytics Experience 2017.

Held Sept. 18-20 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Washington, DC, you’ll learn the latest trends and best practices in analytics from a dream team of analytical experts. Plus, you’ll get to network with peers from around the world and hear from Magic Johnson himself, who is delivering the keynote address on Wednesday, Sept. 20.

Can’t make it to Washington, DC? No problem! You can watch a livestream of Magic’s talk and the other keynote presentations from wherever you are. Visit our website to view the list of available talks, register for the virtual event and add reminders to your calendar. And if you can’t view these talks live, all of them will be available on demand after the event, along with select breakout sessions featuring industry analytics experts.

You can also stay up-to-date with what’s happening on our social channels. You’ll find great information to watch, read and share on Twitter @SASsoftware (#AnalyticsX), Facebook and LinkedIn.

Whether you’re attending in person or joining us virtually, Analytics Experience 2017 is sure to be something I can only dream about: a slam dunk.

Thanks for reading,

Larry LaRusso
Editor, SAS Tech Report
Follow me @lalaru102

SAS Tips and Tricks

Best Practices in Connecting External Databases to SAS®

Connecting database schemas to libraries in the SAS metadata is a very important part of setting up a functional and useful environment for business users. This task can be quite difficult for the untrained administrator. This paper addresses the key configuration items that often go unnoticed but can make a big difference.

Favorite Resources for SAS® Programmers

SAS Jedi (and instructor) Mark Jordan has compiled a list of great resources for SAS programmers, which he freely shares with his students upon request. In this blog post he shares his recommendations with you too.

Making the Sas.Servers Script Look Pretty

If you are a SAS administrator, you must use the sas.servers script on a regular basis. As you know, one of its uses is to display the current status of all servers. Is the output accurate? Absolutely. Is it easy to read? Relatively. Is it visually attractive? Not so much. This blog post provides the steps for applying color and an easy-to-read layout to make the sas.servers script look cute and even fun!

Summary Statistics and T Tests in SAS®

In this blog post from Rick Wicklin, you’ll learn 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.

Filtering Every Which Way in SAS® Enterprise Guide®

In this on-demand webinar you’ll learn the secrets to exploiting the key data management, integration and filtering capabilities of SAS Enterprise Guide. Discover how to find the tasks that conduct data management; four ways to conduct filtering; how to transpose data, restructuring observations and deriving new variables; and how to use the Query Builder’s advanced expression editor.

How to Prepare for a SAS® Certification Exam

Earning a SAS credential is one of the best things you can do for your career. In this post, SAS Senior Certification Specialist Matt Scicchitano shares eight tips to help improve your chances for success on a SAS certification exam.

Transforming the Frequency of Time Series Data

This example illustrates two applications when transforming the frequency of time series data. The first application is combining time series with different frequencies. The second is the interpolation of irregular observations.

Removing Duplicates Using SAS®

An issue found in some data sets is the presence of duplicate observations and/or duplicate keys. When found, SAS can be used to remove any unwanted data. This presentation from SAS Global Forum describes the available methods to remove duplicate observations (or rows) from data sets (or tables) based on the row’s values and/or keys using SAS.

From SAS Communities

Updating Managed Passwords

Need to update passwords in the SAS intelligence platform? No problem, as long as you follow a few important steps. Christine Vitron shares tips, requirements and a lot of helpful takeaways in this article from the SAS Community Library.

Building a User-Defined Function Library With PROC FCMP: The Namecase Function

This series of articles will focus on building a portable library of user-defined functions in much the same way that programmers have built their own macro libraries and will showcase some of the facilities of PROC FCMP, which can add value to your programming efforts. This first article focuses on the namecase function.

Difference Between Strip, Compress and Trim

Contributor pooja215 asks: Could you tell me which function I cannot use for removing leading and trailing spaces from a character text? The SAS programming community responds with code, output and links to helpful documentation.

SAS News

Join Us for Analytics Experience 2017, Sept. 18-20

There’s still time register for the in-person event in Washington, DC, or the virtual event at a computer near you! Register for the live event. Register for the virtual event.

SAS® Global Forum 2018 call for content open

There is still time to submit your ideas for presenting at SAS Global Forum 2018 in Denver April 8-11. Submit through Oct. 12.

SAS^® Tech Report

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