Category: SAS

SAS vs R in data mining (1): challenges for SAS

The past three years witnessed the rise of R, an open source statistical software. Search R related books in Amazon, and tons of recent titles show up ranging from graphics to scientific computation. Thanks to those graduates sprang out of school that …

Use BYTE function to create special ASCII character, e.g. plus/minus sign

data _null_;&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp do i=0 to 255;&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp x=byte(i);&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp put i= x=;&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp end;&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp y=rank(‘a’);&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp put y=;run;BYTE function results:i=65 — 90 x=…

SQL tip – Inner join shorthand with USING

We write a LOT of SQL here and although SQL is a powerful database language, it can be tedious. So here is one tip for shortening all that typing. Typical join sytax: select some_columns from one_table join another_table on one_table.column_1 = another_table.column_1 and one_table.column_2=another_table.column_2 where some_column > someother_column ; Not too bad, right? In order for […]

Top 10 posts by views for 2010

So over the last 12 months the ranking for post views looked like (according to wordpress site stats, rather than google analytics): Post Views Home page 11,532 SAS BI Clients 4.3 and SAS 9.3 673 SAS EG 4.3 is here (but its hiding with Elvis) 533 SAS Articles 508 SAS Portlets for Sale 380 Making […]

Reporting Principles – TOGAF

On one of the projects we have been working on we were required to define some reporting principals using the TOGAF style. I had never used this style/methodology before, but found it great as it forced us to focus on describing these principles in a very succinct (saasinct way. We also found there was a wealth […]

10 tips for building a successful team or users group

Each time I attend a users group event, I’m amazed at the high caliber event that can be acommplished by volunteers in their spare time. I learned during a NESUG panel discussion that finding and motivating those volunteers may sometimes be diffic…