The SAS BI web clients each have their own link (or URL). When working across many customer sites or even just using my own demo sites – there can be a lot of links to track (BI Dashboard, Portal, WRS, etc). Certainly I can add bookmarks to my browser – but when moving to different systems I found it’s easier to just have a little .HTML file that I can edit as needed. Set Your BI Toolset Quick Ref Bookmark If you are not sure what I’m trying to describe – the following page shows an example. It’s really just a simple web page that has the links to the SAS BI Web Clients listed. In this example – the customer had two different servers – Development and Production. Using this quick reference, I can edit the HTML file to match the system I’m using, open the page in the browser, click on the link and it starts the client I want. To make this web page easier to access – I set it as a default so it appears when I start Internet Explorer. You can set your default home page in the Tools > Internet Options window. [Other browsers have […]
Tag: Stored Process Tips
SAS Stored Processes: 3 Tips to Improve Your Prompts
SAS stored processes are similar to SAS programs in that they use the same programming language. Many of my SAS programs I created early on were only used by me, so I could live with a little uncertainty and it was easy enough to check the logs for any issues. If anything went wrong then I knew what I had to change. Stored processes required a whole new level of thinking – my first few stored processes back in the SAS 9.1.3 days were – well they left a lot to be desired. When I would roll out a new stored process I would often get a call from a user who had done something crazy and the stored process wouldn’t work. For instance, why would anyone put a state name in a customer name field to see if it would return all the customers from that state? Only one thing could happen – no report! Here’s some usability tricks that I have learned with my SAS Stored Processes to make them more robust and harder to break. Really the out-of-the box prompts provide a lot of functionality that really helps. That’s right – let’s build a better mousetrap! Tip #1: […]
Stored Processes: 3 Ways to Edit a Stored Process
Some may not realize that you can edit a SAS Stored Process in multiple ways (depending on your permissions). Today I show you three different ways to reach the stored process code. By the way, I’m using SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3 and SAS Management Console 9.3 – so your windows may look different. Method 1: SAS Enterprise Guide Many of you are aware of this method already. Just for review – here’s how you open a stored process and then change it with SAS Enterprise Guide. You have to be connected to the metadata server to reach the stored process. From the SAS Folders pane, select the SAS Folders icon. Navigate to the stored process location. Right-click the stored process and select Add to Project. The stored process appears in the Process Flow and Project Tree areas. From the Process Tree or the Project Flow area, right-click the stored process name and select Modify <stored process name>. The Stored Process Manager window appears and you can make changes to your code. I use this method most often because I like the help I get from SAS Enterprise Guide. Method 2: SAS Management Console If you have access to the […]
SAS Stored Processes: Excerpt from STP Book
We excerpted this post from The 50 Keys to Learning SAS Stored Processes. Chapter 2: Creating Simple Stored Processes BASE SAS gives programmers the exponential ability to query and report about data from their desktops; however, this limitation means that a user can access the data from their desktops only. As an organization’s reporting needs grow, more individuals need to quickly retrieve and analyze similar information. As a result, a small group with access to the data unintentionally becomes report gatekeepers. Other members of the organization have to talk to these gatekeepers for even the simplest piece of data. Before you convert a SAS program to a stored process, you must consider whether the program is a good candidate for conversion. Although any SAS program can be a stored process, this does not mean that all programs should be a stored process. Programs that require user input, run on user demand, and generate output are typically better candidates than those programs scheduled to run overnight, take a long time to run or require no user modifications. In Chapter 1, “Getting Started with Stored Processes” you learned how to register a stored process. In this chapter, you will convert an existing […]
SAS EG and Stored Processes: 3 Tips for Using Options
There are some helpful options you can set in SAS Enterprise Guide to make your day-to-day coding tasks a little quicker. Some of these tasks can impact stored processes you create from tasks instead of coding. SAS Enterprise Guide Options From the Tools > Options menu you can preset options such as footer text and default SAS code that you want run before or after a task executes. Sometimes this can be more helpful than other times. Tip #1 – Adding a Default Footer You can add a default footer or header to all of your SAS generated reports. If you are using the SAS Tasks, SAS automatically adds whatever you have preset in the Options. If you use SAS functions or macro variables your reports and graphs will appear more customized. To set a default footer for your SAS Enterprise Guide reports and graphs, do this: From the Tools>Options menu, select the Tasks General pane. In the Default footnote text for task output field, type your text. For instance, I am using the default time and date to indicate the last time the report was updated. Note! The date() function returns when the SAS Enterprise Guide session was started […]
Ready for the Next Generation of SAS?
There’s so much excitement about big data, data scientists, and all things that mean you need some serious SAS BI skills. On Monday I was discussing the Kinsey Insitiute projections for data related jobs, but even the New York Times ran The Age of Big Data an article about it. Appears everyone is talking about it! oooh … Buzz! I love it. SAS BI Developer Demand is Growing The past December, BusinessIntellience.Com, reported that SAS Business Analytics SMB Sales Jumped 42 Percent and went on to comment that ”[this] jump demonstrates that enterprises of all sizes are seizing business analytics as a vital competitive tool.” Last week, the same webzine was reporting that SAS in Leaders Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms according to the Gartner Inc report. As SAS Institute sells more SAS BI solutions, naturally more SAS BI Developer jobs become available. On the Indeed.Com you can search out job trends to determine which fields seem to be growing. [Disclaimer! These figures are based on Indeed.Com job postings and I have no idea what their counting rules are – so I realize this could be that more recruiters use Indeed or Indeed has a better aggregation methodology.] With that said, check out the SAS BI […]
Peek Inside SAS BI Book: Building Business Intelligence with SAS
You may be aware by now, our new SAS BI book Building Business Intelligence with SAS:Content Development Examples launched last week on the SAS Press site. That’s right, SAS Press or Amazon will be delighted to bring a copy of this SAS BI book to your door. When Angela and I set out to write this book, one of the first things we discussed was how new users get access to the SAS BI toolset and have no idea of its astonishing capabilities. This book guides you through each one so you understand it. Intermediate and advanced users will also find this book as a valuable reference. Several times, Angela & I have both found ourselves pulling out the draft copy to reference an advanced technique. This book fulfills a unique spot in the marketplace; there is no other single book that leads you through each SAS BI component with step-by-step examples along with hundreds of tips and techniques to make you successful! SAS Institute offers over nine SAS BI courses to cover all the topics we have jammed packed into this book. Making this an excellent study guide for those planning to take the SAS BI Content Development Exam. Your SAS […]
SAS BI: Looking at Google Analytics for Popular Blog Topics
This past week I have been studying the Google Analytics data to determine the best topics to discuss in the upcoming month and to prepare the SAS Glo Fo 2012 conference. Google Analytics allows me to measure which posts get the most hits when posted and continue to be popular or referenced. I’ll unveil my little known, but highly coveted analytics process. How’s that for some hype? Getting the Google Analytics Data In a past article, I discussed how I extracted the data from Google Analytics using Excellent Analytics. The following figure shows my query in the Excellent Analytics tool, the data results, and the results in SAS Enterprise Guide. The data consists of the date, post path and title (with URL), source (how person came to site), and visitor type. It’s probably obvious why I would want the date, post, and source but what is not so obvious is visitor type. Visitor Type allows me analyze what topics bring new visitors to the site as well as the topics that retain visitors. Cleaning Up the Data My original plan was to use MS Excel to complete this analysis since I thought it would be simple. However, I realized that […]