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ammarhm
Lapis Lazuli | Level 10

Hi everyone.

Appologies if this is not the right form...

I have been using SAS Base for a few years. SAS EG comes installed with the SAS bundle I have but I have never really used it... Once every now and then I would try to use it but would then immediatly go back to SAS Base as i find it cleaner and less confusing....

So just wondering, what are (if any) the advantages of moving from SAS base to EG

THanks

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions
ammarhm
Lapis Lazuli | Level 10

Thank you everyone for the kind replies

Seems everyone is in agreement that there is (probably) no huge gain from moving to EG.

Appreciate your time and advice

kind regards

Am

View solution in original post

10 REPLIES 10
Patrick
Opal | Level 21

@ammarhm

What's right for you really depends - SAS Base aka PC SAS aka Display Manager, SAS Enterprise Guide or SAS Studio.

http://blogs.sas.com/content/sasdummy/2014/05/30/sas-studio-and-eg/ 

 

As for the Display Manager ("SAS Base"):

This is actually a windowing environment which sits directly on your SAS server and in order to use it  on your PC you must have a local SAS installation (SAS binaries installed). Almost all bigger SAS sites I know of use a client-server architecture and more and more without an additional license and installation of SAS on PC's. 

 

I do miss metabrowse in SAS EG but I really like how easily I can execute code on a server and switch between servers if there are multiple. I also like how easy it is to recover when I stuff up in my code with unbalanced quotation marks and the like. I'm also fond of some of the wizards, i.e. the import wizard which allows me to quickly generate a code template for reading a text file.

 

I'm a "coder" but for above reasons I'm mostly using EG and more and more often also SAS Studio which is browser based and doesn't require any client side installation (something an IT department really likes of course).

 

Use whatever client serves you best but be prepared that your days of using the Display Manager might be numbered.

PaigeMiller
Diamond | Level 26

I too have tried briefly to migrate from the SAS Application Workspace (which some call "Base SAS") to EG, but I have found too many issues in EG which seem to slow me down. It may be I just don't understand the EG interface well enough, but there are enough "drawbacks" to EG in my mind that I have gone back and have stopped trying to use EG.

 

Now, as I said, maybe I don't grasp the EG interface, and someone will jump in and tell me how to do this in EG, but here's my biggest problem with EG:

 

While debugging, sometimes I have two or three windows open simultaneously, for example, a viewtable window so I can see my data, a Program Editor or Enhanced Editor window so I can see my code (and sometimes a 2nd editor window with different code that worked properly, or sometimes also the SAS Log, or sometimes also a 2nd data set that I am trying to merge with the first ... you get the idea), and I can't seem to figure out how to do all of this in EG. It seems to me in EG, if you have your code window open, then you can't also be displaying your data. There is an option to show two windows side by side (but not three windows, AFAIK) and any way if you open two windows they are vertical and then part of my code isn't visible, it is scrolled out of the window to the right.

 

I have other problems with EG, but that is the biggest one right now.

--
Paige Miller
Reeza
Super User

I've never been able to make the switch to EG myself, but have been using SAS Studio lately and I prefer it over Base. The only real benefit of Base over Studio is that it operates locally and can interact with your OS

SAS Studio supports working in multiple screens which is incredibly efficient. 

PeterClemmensen
Tourmaline | Level 20

I never really got the hang of EG either, but I think that is mainly a habit thing. I do 99,9% of my work in Base SAS. I like the auto-indent functionality in SAS EG, (Control+i) though 🙂

PaigeMiller
Diamond | Level 26

As with @PeterClemmensen, I do see some advantages of EG, but I am not willing to be slowed down by the problems I mentioned above. It seems to me that EG was not really designed for the needs of people who do nothing but program (and that's fine if it was designed that way). It is great for people who want to do SAS but don't want to do the programming.

 

Another problem I have run into with EG (and please, if there is a way to do this, let me know) is that I cannot watch the LOG as the program executes. In Base SAS, if I am running a program that I know will take a few minutes, and I watch the LOG as it scrolls by, and 10 seconds after I start I can see red text, then I can stop the program from executing further (saving me minutes of time) and fix the problem. In EG, I can't do this at all, I have to wait until the program finishes executing and then search the LOG for errors.

--
Paige Miller
andreas_lds
Jade | Level 19

When i started coding in sas - nearly 10 years ago - i was told that everyone in the company uses display manager. I tried it and after a week i thought it is time to search for a new job. After coding in c# and java using Eclipse and MS Visual Studio for nearly 15 years before switching to sas, the display manager was just incredible ugly and lacking dozens of features i was used to (like automatic refactoring, when a variable name had to be changed). EG (4.1) was not that much better, but at least the UI looked like something created in 21st century.

 

SAS Studio looks nice and has some very interesting features, but does not have the concept of a project, of things that belong together and should always been seen as a unit. What i miss most is the Git-integration which has been added to EG in 7.x.

 

 

Reeza
Super User

Git is enabled for SAS Studio, under repositories.

ChrisBrooks
Ammonite | Level 13

I've used Ultraedit to write my SAS code for a number of years - that has the concept of Projects you're looking for plus a lot of other reallly nice features (bookmarking lines of code, fast searching in code files etc). Of course you have to drop back into display manager or EG to run it for testing but you quickly get into the habit of that.

ChrisNZ
Tourmaline | Level 20

Like other respondents, I find EG frustrating. It is forced upon SAS users for cost-cutting reasons, and is pushed by SAS for reasons I cannot fathom, but for an experienced programmer, I reckon it is a major step back in functionality from the DMS.

 

Yes the DMS has an obsolete interface as someone pointed out, but at least it has basic features to work with. You can't even see catalogs or move data windows (2 max!) around or apply a format on the fly or see basic table metadata or compare metadata or unbuffer the log and on and on and on.

 

EG is great for learners and beginners, and while I appreciate that some experienced programmers like EG, there is no doubt that having my toolbox emptied of the small tools that make interacting with programs and data easier has cut my productivity. The one feature I would miss going back to the DMS is one log per program. That's it. 

ammarhm
Lapis Lazuli | Level 10

Thank you everyone for the kind replies

Seems everyone is in agreement that there is (probably) no huge gain from moving to EG.

Appreciate your time and advice

kind regards

Am

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