What if your first major career experience let you build technology, lead student programs and collaborate across countries, all at the same time?   It began with a LinkedIn scroll. I spotted an opportunity with the SAS CareerStart Program and immediately recognised the kind of work I already loved: connecting with students, running events and hackathons, building communities and making technology easier to understand. As a Computer Science student, I expected the technical work to challenge me. What I did not expect was how much I would also learn about people, communication and turning ideas into experiences that genuinely help others. Why the CareerStart@SAS Program stood out The opportunity felt bigger than a traditional early-career placement. It offered the chance to work with colleagues and education partners across countries, learn through mentoring and one-to-one development, and contribute to projects with visible outcomes for students and educators.  The role also matched the experiences I had built at university through student organizations, technical webinars and cross-campus activities. I knew I could bring those skills with me, while stretching well beyond my comfort zone.        Turning ideas to APAC-wide impact When I joined SAS, I quickly became involved in a variety of projects across the Asia-Pacific region. In practice, this meant working on several initiatives at once: Presenting live enterprise analytics demos at four APAC events to more than 370 students and faculty Running an APAC-wide hackathon that attracted more than 500 registrations and was built around SAS Viya for Learners Developing joint capstone projects with RMIT, the University of Canberra, and UNSW Designing a course recommendation engine that personalizes learning pathways for students Testing how SAS Viya for Learners works with the SAS Extension for VS Code, REST APIs, and the Model Context Protocol (MCP), while documenting the first viable workflows for these integrations Volunteering with Girls in Tech in Sydney and Melbourne to support girls and young women pursuing careers in technology Supporting academic opportunities and partnerships in the Philippines  The biggest lesson: technical skills help you build a solution, but curiosity about the person using it is what makes the solution useful. Learning to build without a perfect playbook Two projects especially shaped my experience. My cohort helped bring the SAS Viya for Learners Challenge to APAC. We had a useful foundation from the Australia and New Zealand event, but a regional rollout introduced new questions that we had to solve on our own during the event. We captured our learnings so future cohorts can build on them and scale the program further. The Model Context Protocol integration work to SAS Viya for Learners free software was similarly exploratory. There was no step-by-step answer waiting for me. I tested different approaches, identified viable workflows and documented the process for the people who would continue the work. That experience taught me that progress often begins with a willingness to experiment. More than technical experience At first glance, this might not seem like a typical Computer Science role. But I discovered that my degree was just as valuable when translating complex technology into something relevant and accessible for students as it was when working directly with code and tools. The goal was not only to explain how the technology worked, but also to show students how it could help them complete university projects, develop practical skills, and improve their employability. That mindset inspired the course recommendation engine. Instead of asking only, “Can I build this?”, I asked, “What would encourage a student to discover a useful course they might otherwise miss?” The technical build mattered, but understanding the learner made it meaningful. At the same time, the internship accelerated my own technical growth. Although I only began learning SAS Viya and Base SAS when I joined SAS, the experience gave me the confidence to pursue certifications and continue expanding my skills. In many ways, I was learning alongside the students I hoped to support. 3 Lessons I will take forward Looking back, three lessons stand out from my internship experience. 1. Stay Curious About Your Audience Students often know more than we assume. The strongest programs begin by understanding what people already know, what they need next and how to build from there. 2. Focus on Authentic and Accountable Applications In industry, the important question is not only how a technology works. It is how it can solve a real problem. That requires testing, understanding limitations and communicating value honestly. 3. Bring Your Passion to a Wider Stage Working with colleagues across countries exposed me to new perspectives, cultures and ways of collaborating. Diverse teams do more than broaden your network. They strengthen ideas.       My advice to students Be open to learning beyond your technical specialty. The moments that stretch you often become the ones that shape you most. Volunteer for the presentation. Ask the extra question. Test the uncertain idea. Work with people whose experiences are different from yours. Most importantly, focus on creating value for others. The SAS CareerStart Program showed me that technical skills and human understanding are not competing strengths. Together, they are what turn knowledge into impact. Ready to explore what your own CareerStart journey could look like? Learn more about the internship program: https://www.sas.com/en_ph/careers/students-and-graduates/internships-and-fellowships.html Join the SAS student community: https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/FAQ-for-students-and-independent-learners/ta-p/728270   ... View more

A new update is available for Base SAS , version 9.4_M8 : Hot Fix: M4B023 - Published 10NOV2026 , Download link for M4B023 Component name: Base SAS Related SAS release: SAS 9.4   Issues addressed in M4B023 SAS Note 70504 Support for the IBM "System SSL" for z64 KB0060696 The HTTP procedure fails with "ERROR: Unable to read data from Web server. Retry is not available. This list of notes might be incomplete. For a complete list of issues addressed by this hot fix, visit the hot fix page for M4B023   Note: A comprehensive list of all SAS hot fixes is available from support.sas.com. You can use the SAS Hot Fix Analysis, Download, and Deployment (SASHFADD) tool to manage your SAS hot fixes. ... View more

RikdR's article on Decision Economics of Real-time Signals (https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/Decision-Economics-of-Real-time-Signals/ta-p/994900) lists decision governance as a source of value: being able to show how and why a decision was made. I'd like to ask about one specific part of that: replaying a past decision with only what was known at the time. Some background. In a retrospective study, I reconstructed all 65 Federal Reserve SOMA awards in a sample of U.S. 10-year Treasury auctions from published rules and inputs, with every absolute difference below USD 100. Matching the outcome turned out to be the easy part. The hard part is proving that each input was actually available before the decision, and a full point-in-time replay is still to be validated. A simple case shows the problem. A file describes Monday's state but is only published on Wednesday. For a decision with a Tuesday cutoff, that file must not be used, even though the rule it feeds was already in force on Monday. So each decision needs four separate timestamps: rule effective date, data reference date, data availability time and decision cutoff. In SAS Intelligent Decisioning: 1. Where would you enforce the availability constraint: upstream in the data query, inside the rule conditions, or in a code node? 2. Can an execution be bound to specific versions of the decision, its rule sets and lookup tables, together with the input data as available at the original decision cutoff, to support an auditable point-in-time replay? 3. Beyond rule-fired and path tracking, what would you keep in the execution record to make that replay auditable? I'd be grateful for any experience or pointers to documentation. Piotr Pach ... View more

Hi Experts,   I recently created a new SAS Workspace Server (SASApp2) using the SAS Deployment Wizard. The workspace was created successfully and validation in SAS Management Console (SMC) is successful. However, when I try to access the new workspace through SAS Studio, I receive the following error: "The application could not log on to the server 'SASengineserver.domain.com:8592'. No server is available at that port on that machine." Environment details: Metadata & Mid-tier Server: SASMetamid.domain.com Application Server: SASengineserver.domain.com SASApp: Working fine SASApp2: Not working through SAS Studio Could you please help me understand what could be causing this issue and what configurations I should verify? Thanks in advance for your support.   Regards, Srinivas ... View more

Does anyone here know how to identify the candidates VARMA(p,q) orders based on Cross-Correlation Function (CCF) and Partial Cross-Correlation Function (PCCF) plots? Could someone guide me on what specific patterns—such as where the lags cut off or tail off across the different variable combinations—I should be looking for to deduce the candidate p and q orders? ... View more