New idea exchange ideas in SAS Support Communities

System Option for Displaying Macro Source Code on Log Only Once

F_Pierantoni — Sun, 30 Oct 2022 22:02:34 GMT

Due to cybersecurity restrictions, our SAS Site Administrators have enforced system options like SOURCE, SOURCE2 and MPRINT on every SAS session to make sure that every single line of submitted code is printed on the SAS Log.
Options SOURCE and SOURCE2 pose no particular problem. But a locked-in MPRINT option has the unwanted effect of multiplying the number of lines of Macro Code being printed on the Log, every time a Macro is invoked.
Having a system option that displays the Macro Code only once (regardless of how many times the Macro is called in the program) would be very helpful to reduce the number of lines displayed on the Log.
MPRINT is a debugging option that works well as it does.
The new option could be named somewhat differently (maybe MLOG ?).

Bring back the Narratives from the PSS (Power and Sample Size) application

Norman21 — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 08:58:40 GMT

Please bring back the Narratives from the PSS (Power and Sample Size) application. I found this very useful for rapidly generating a sensible, accurate report.

According to SAS Technical Support, the PSS application was replaced by a set of tasks in SAS Studio 3.6, but does not include the Narratives (described near the bottom of this page:https://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/statug/63962/HTML/default/viewer.htm#statug_clientpss_sect006.htm )

More discussion here: https://communities.sas.com/t5/Community-Suggestion-Box/Bring-back-the-Narratives-from-the-PSS-Power-and-Sample-Size/idc-p/831196

Customise Reference Lines

maxwill — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 03:01:18 GMT

A feature present in previous versions, before VA 8.3, the reference lines can't be customised anymore. We would like to customise the reference lines with colours and styles. In a report created with dark colours, the reference lines can't be seen as they are also black. That influences reports that can be created in the style and colour scheme of a particular brand. The reference line text should also allow to be customised, allowing to change font, colour and size. The line itself could be dotted, solid or other variations. The text also is over other text when more than one line is close to each other, so the direction of the text should be automated to not overlap or allow customisation to choose the direction of the text. Moreover, the reference lines could be part of the rules so you can change them all at once in all reports. Thank you.

Example of how all this is not working currently:

Example of Reference Lines with dark background and reference lines text that can't be moved or customised.

Confidence limits using the Miettinen-Nurminen stratified method as described in the 1985 paper

vjaquet — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 08:31:08 GMT

The FDA asked us to use a method other than Wald and strongly suggested that we use Miettinen-Nurminen 1985 (MN) for computing confidence limits (CL) at summary level. This method is becoming increasingly popular and is used by many pharmaceutical companies, including Merck, Abbvie, and Moderna (cf. simple Google search).

SAS has provided a partial implementation of MN scoring through COMMONRISKDIFF(CL=score) where the within-stratum calculation follows MN 1985 but inverse-variance stratum weights are used at the summary level. This method comes from the 2013 Agresti book. Has this method ever been published in a peer-reviewed article? Has it ever been used in a clinical trial submission? Is this method popular, i.e., number of citations? The lack of visibility in the use of this "SCORE" method prevent the use of this algorithm in a submission to health authorities.

The current alternative is to use R. Indeed, two packages have been developed to calculate CL based on MN 1985 method: metalite.ae (Merck) and scoreci. SAS users have already written about this 4 years ago.

I am a biostatistical manager at Bristol Myers Squibb. This issue has risen to the VP level as we plan to adopt MN 1985 in all our submissions in all the therapeutic areas. Confidence limits play an important role because they influence key analyses such as futility analysis for the primary outcome.

Will you provide this algorithm and if so, when?

Page break in RTF

Martin_RBV — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 15:46:32 GMT

Request to SAS:

Update the RTF-Output template in such a way that it will be easily possible to insert PAGAE breaks and not (only) SECTION breaks, or at least SECTION breaks that completely comply with the format of SECTION breaks generated by Microsoft Word so that they can be modified/replaced by standard procedures in MS Word.

Thanks.

Conversion tools 32<->64 bit

Martin_RBV — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 14:35:40 GMT

Request to SAS:
Please provide, in every SAS version, a tool to convert files/catalogs between 32 and 64 bit (without the need to buy a licence for a new 'SAS module'). This should not be a problem for experienced (SAS) programmer.

Thanks.

ByGroup context for VA Ranks Pane

Sam_SAS — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 15:25:52 GMT

Today a user asked how to show the top 2 values for each bygroup in a VA object on the VA community.

We don't seem to have a good way to do this in VA. It seems like it would be a logical feature to add a "Context" option on the rank definition on the Ranks pane to let you switch between the ByGroup and ForAll contexts, similar to the _ByGroup_ | _ForAll_ context we specify for aggregations in the expression editor.

For example, if we have this crosstab:

We could make a ranking on Model that would return the top two models for each Type category:

Currently I believe this can only be achieved with by precalculating the rank.

Procedure for automating counterfactual analysis

supp — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 12:01:54 GMT

After building a bayesian model it would be great to have simple way to run counterfactual analysis. Perhaps a procedure where we could specify the model and a variable that we want to simulate different values for. The output could include the target variable values for the different input variable values and a sensitivity (tornado) diagram.

Add prompt to SAS Studio

Rasmus_H — Wed, 29 Jun 2022 10:00:34 GMT

SAS studio is missing the Prompt feature from SAS Enterprise guide. The current work around is difficult and if we were to use SAS studio as a replacement for Enterprise Guide, we need this feature.

Add a global option to warn about overwriting of variable values

xxformat_com — Sat, 25 Jun 2022 11:47:39 GMT

Hi,

Two variables of the same name are used in a merge without being listed in the by statement is usually unintentionnal (usually done by mistake).

As far I'm aware of, the only way to be informed about it is to display information messages in the log using options msglevel=i;.

But

That option is not in the default setting.
The message is not really easy to notice (black color) and not listed in the interface

Other messages which are usually not that relevant popup on the way with this option.

Would it be possible to have a global option called for example mergeoverwrite= (or any other relevant name) with WARN by default (as VARLENCHK=)?

data one;
   key=1; x=1; output;
   key=2; x=2; output;
run;


data two;
   key=1; x=5; output;
   key=2; x=6; output;
run;

*options mergeoverwrite=WARN;
options msglevel=i;

data demo;
   merge one two;
   by key;
run;

Have Proc Datasets show what caused an integrity constraint to fail

barefootguru — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 02:47:11 GMT

data a;

b=3; output;

b=.; output;

run;

proc datasets nolist;

modify a;

ic create not null(b);

ic create check(where=(b=3));

quit;

Currently both these ICs will display:

ERROR: Integrity constraint _CK0001_ was rejected because 1 observations failed the constraint.

Would be handy to have a sample of the errors, similar to the data step:

…was rejected because _n_=2 b=.

Currently after receiving the error you have to regenerate the data set (if you're in batch), then subset it based on the IC to find the failing observations.

(Forum software was complaining non-specifically about an HTML error, then about me spamming when I tried again, so have removed all formatting. An hour lockout seems excessive.)

SAS Visual Analytics: Position Pages

EllenLo — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 07:14:19 GMT

In SAS Visual Analytics, similar like changing the position of report of page filters, it would be nice to be able to change the position of the pages. The pages are currently on the top of a report but then can be placed on the left, right or bottom. And even better be able to change the color, font, etc..

Add SAS Packages Framework to the SAS Base/Viya

yabwon — Fri, 27 May 2022 21:54:38 GMT

Hi SAS Community!

The idea for this ballot is to include SAS Packages Framework macros (https://github.com/yabwon/SAS_PACKAGES/blob/main/SPF/SPFinit.md) into Base SAS and Viya.

Mature open source communities (e.g. R, Python, or TeX groups) allow users to share code (even complex one) in an easy "transportable" form of packages. I believe that the SAS Community is also one that could use such form of "code exchange". The SAS Packages Framework is a set of macros which allow you to build SAS Packages. (The framework is open source and MIT licensed)

To build or use a package macros from the framework need to be available in the SAS session. So now it requires additional effort for both developers and users who want to work with SAS Packages - the framework has to be downloaded and included for a SAS session. Why no add the framework macros to the SAS deployment so both developers and users could focus on making and using SAS Packages rather than on setting up "environment" to do so?

Articles describing the idea are here and here

Video introduction to the idea can be found here and here.

All the best

Bart

excel conditional highlighting from display rules

tavoneantonella — Thu, 19 May 2022 09:42:02 GMT

The Ability to export in excel conditional highlighting from display rules of table

PDF bookmarks from PROC REPORT using BY groups

derekmor54 — Mon, 16 May 2022 17:38:02 GMT

I was wondering if it wouldn't be better to use the BY values instead of the old 1970's style BY groups as the default bookmarks. The format "byvar=by-value" is old-fashioned, and not very presentation- or publishing-friendly. While you can change the bookmark labels using PROC DOCUMENT, I would be willing to bet this simple change would replace a lot of PROC DOCUMENT code.

Very careful syntax checking mode

AndersS — Wed, 11 May 2022 20:17:23 GMT

SAS code like: IF A < B THEN; shall be flagged. Perhaps incorrect.

SAS Software has in some aspects a syntax that is different from other languages. When users move between different languages, they are more likely to make mistakes. What I suggest is some kind of Very careful syntax checking mode - wherever that is possible,

/ Br Anders

Provide Sequential Search Capability for Hash Objects

Kurt_Bremser — Wed, 18 May 2022 18:44:59 GMT

I suggest the creation of additional methods for hash objects which provide the capability to first "position" a pointer in the search tree (e.g. hash.pos_key()), even if the key is not found, and then find the next key in the sorting sequence (hash.next_key()). The second method should have an option to search "up" or "down", the default being "up".

The first method will always return a zero, while the second method will return a non-zero return code if the beginning (while searching "down") or the end (while searching "up") of the hash has been reached. Multiple entries for a given key should be treated as one.

Thank you note as Accepted Solution

PGStats — Mon, 02 May 2022 04:06:23 GMT

Many users mark their own thank you note as the Accepted Solution to their problem. I guess they mean to indicate "This is where I accepted the solution!"

When a poster accepts his/her own post as the Accepted Solution, he/she should be asked to confirm and be reminded of the real purpose of Accepted Solutions.

SAS EG & SAS Studio: Menu for Closing Tabs

Patrick — Sat, 30 Apr 2022 10:29:34 GMT

Not the most important functionality but still very useful:

Please provide for closing Tabs in SAS EG and SAS Studio functionality similar to Notepad++

SAS EG:

Notepad++

Start Page - Allow easy removal of multiple Recent Items and Pinned Items via check-box of Ctrl-key

DaveShea — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 06:06:05 GMT

The SAS Enterprise Guide 8.x Start Page features the Recent Items and Pinned Items area which is useful, but quickly gets clogged up.

I know that a right-mouse click offers options [Remove from List] and [Clear Recent Items] to keep the list in some sort of order, but these options are either laborious or heavy-handed.

I suggest that we should be able to select several non-contiguous items, in either list, and then right-mouse click and remove them from the lists in one action. The selection could be made with a Ctrl-click combination, or by placing a check-box against each item, as offered by Windows Explorer. This would be a distinct improvement of this feature.

The screenshot below shows a typically congested Recent Items and Pinned Items area

Cheers,

Downunder Dave
Wellington