SAS packages OR?

[K-I]

Hello,

When I run proc setinit; run;

I get some of interesting packages there.

Wonder if somebody can explain what are these packages and why they are used for, because was not able to google them 🙂

OR OPT
OR PRS
OR IVS
OR LSO
Unused OLAP Slot
External function linking system

Thanks

[Kurt_Bremser]

Start here for OR.

"External function linking system" points to integrating user-written functions (in Windows, a .dll objects).

[Rick_SAS]

> Wonder if somebody can explain what are these packages and why they are used for

The short answer is that you don't need to worry about them. Because many products at SAS use optimization as part of their computations, the optimization routines are not distributed in one monolithic chunk. Instead, the functionality is "packaged" into smaller chunks so that SAS/STAT, SAS/IML, data mining, and other products can consume only the pieces that they need.  You can think of these "packages" as self-contained units that address certain types of optimization problems.

I don't know the complete details, but, for example, OR OPT might contain the bulk of linear and nonlinear optimization routines. LSO means "local search optimization," which is nowadays known as "black-box optimization." The others are associated with other sub-areas of optimization.