Our team planned to use a new set of data tables to increase our customer knowledge and overall improve our processes. Due to our workloads, our team lead had a person (Dev X) from another team write some code to access the tables and create some usable datasets for our process. After the code was written, Dev X was asked to arrange a meeting to review the programs. In short, it did not go well. It was not anything Dev X did, it was what did not happen that contributed to the issue. So what went wrong and what can you learn? Mistake #1: Presuming data knowledge What Happened Dev X asked first what our SAS skill level was – the team lead answered “Advanced – macro writers“. Dev X then walked us through the code explaining how SQL joins worked, purpose of LET statements, and how various SAS functions worked, etc. Frankly – it was insulting and a time waster. What Should Have Happened It was good to ask our skill level. If Dev X had been misled in the past, a few questions to qualify “Advanced” would have been good. “Do you use SQL to join, are you […]
Jedi SAS Tricks: Free SAS Training (if you’re quick)
You may be wondering why I’ve been so quiet lately. The answer is – I’ve been busy building SAS’ first instructor based asynchronous training class! Our new “SAS® SQL2: Processing Data Efficiently in Real-World Scenarios” class runs for 5 week and…
10 tips for organizing your SAS Enterprise Guide projects
What is the best way to organize your SAS work in a SAS Enterprise Guide project? There are no project templates or enforced structure, really, but isn’t there a best practice? I don’t have a single prescription for the best project organization. I believe that it depends on the nature […]
Info Map: Get me a new Data Item, puhhleeze!
When creating a new data item, you might want to combine two or more data fields to make one. For instance, you want to create the data item Full Name from First Name and Last Name data items. Using the SAS CAT functions makes this is an easy task. There are three CAT functions available from the Expression Editor. Each of these functions has a slight difference that is useful in various situations. For this example, you will learn how to use the CATX functions to create the Full name data item in three different ways: Employee Name is the First Name and Last Name Employee is the Last Name, First Name Employee Code uses the Employee Number and Last Name The CATX function does 3 things: Concatenates two or more data items Removes the white space at end of the character value Allows you to set a delimiter (comma, space, and so on) between the data items Create Employee Name For this data item, you want a space between the first name and last name. When adding the code place a space between the quote marks. Create Employee For this data item, you want a comma between the last and […]
JMP is bundled with SAS Enterprise Miner in both 9.2 & 9.3
I blogged a while ago about some changes to the SAS licensing with SAS adding a few more capabilities at no extra charge (didn’t even need to buy the steak knives One of the things I mentioned was that JMP is now bundled as part of SAS Enterprise Miner (to match your EM client license). But I […]
An Online Latin to English Translator via SAS
Last month I submitted piece of SAS codes for a monthly programming challenge hosted by Jian Dai to translate the Latin motto of Hogwarts School in Harry Potter into English:
draco dormiens nunquam titillandus
You can get the meaning using Google search of course—but not in Google Translator (Google Translator can’t recognize all of such Latin words!). […]