Tag: Uncategorized

Jedi SAS Tricks: FUNC(y) Formats

In the previous episode, we built our own custom SAS function – a masterful trick indeed. Gordon Keener, a developer here at SAS, responded exuberantly “You think that’s cool? – try THIS!” and proceeded to demonstrate prodigious powers with the SAS by …

#1 SAS programming tip for 2012

What tiny looking operator packs a mighty punch with large datasets?  Your queries are big. Your reports span multiple columns. To top it all you have to summarize data in multiple ways. Are you tempted to throw in the towel? Do you feel like saying a…

Get the syntax right

With your fingers poised over the keyboard and staring lovingly into the program editor, your mind goes blank. Panic sets in. Oh no.  What’s the name of the statement I need ?  Oh right. The ODS Select statement. Maybe. Lots and lots of SAS users wr…

Using Windows PowerShell to view your SAS data dictionary

In a previous post I showed how you can use Windows PowerShell (with the SAS Local Data Provider) to create a SAS data set viewer.  This approach doesn’t require that you have SAS installed, and allows you to read or export the records within a SAS data set file. In […]

Things I’ve Learned About WordPress.com

I’m almost done moving this site from Google Sites to WordPress. This post describes some of the some things I’ve learned about WordPress.com. By default, WordPress.com makes your site look like a blog. I preferred it look like a web … Continue reading

Jedi SAS Tricks – Roll Your Own Function

A SAS user (who lives in the the US) emailed me a question about SAS functions. He was read UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) datetime values from server logs, and to make future calculations and comparisons easier, he wanted to transform the value to …

ESTIMATE Statements – the final installment

FINALLY…the simplest ESTIMATE statements to write are for continuous variables not involved in interactions or higher order terms. Consider a data set containing the 2004 SAT scores for each of the 50 states. The file includes the combined math and v…

The top gotchas when moving to 64-bit SAS for Windows

Many SAS customers are quickly adopting 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows, and they are pleased-as-punch when they find a 64-bit version of SAS to run on it. They waste no time in deploying the new version, only to find that a few things don’t work quite the same as they […]