Documentaion of SAS Windows interface functioning

[emaguin]

I'm a long-time spss user and i'm going into a sas shop. I have 9.4 installed. I'm looking for documentation of how the windows interface works. I down-loaded the SAS Windows9.4 pdf and while i have no doubt that it is complete, it does not document the windows interface. Where do i find that documentation? Thanks.

[Reeza]

Are you using SAS Studio, Display Manager (Base SAS) or Enterprise Guide?

Each have their own different documentation. 

Assuming you're using Display Manager, that's documented under the 'Windowing Environment' here:

https://documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=lrcon&docsetTarget=n1039zk8bk9aton1fmbm7z2wji3k.htm&docsetVe...

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@emaguin wrote:

I'm a long-time spss user and i'm going into a sas shop. I have 9.4 installed. I'm looking for documentation of how the windows interface works. I down-loaded the SAS Windows9.4 pdf and while i have no doubt that it is complete, it does not document the windows interface. Where do i find that documentation? Thanks.

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[emaguin]

I downloaded the pdf mentioned and read the windows section (I'm also working through the e-learning programming 1 essentials.) It was informative but inadequate. My reference point is spss (30+ years, mainframe, pc, and windows). As you know spss normally opens with empty data / variable viewer windows. SAS does not; however it has viewtable, which i stumbled around and found under table editor. Even with a dataset open, e.g., data storm_cat5; set pg1.storm_summary; table editor/viewtable is blank. Now, i have learned how to see the dataset but so far as i know, never described anywhere. Spss provides a variable view window showing for each variable in the open dataset: position, name, format, variable and value labels, etc. I just today discovered that if i open a dataset (via explorer), select column/variable, right-click, select column attributes, I see name, format, and in(put) format. Described where? There's more, of course.

Let's move on. As you know, the spss output (.spv) file combines syntax echo, any run-time messages, and command (proc) outputs -- a combination of log and results. In SAS, a proc that generates output writes to the results viewer and to the results window. How is the results window useful? Clicking on a entry does not appear to "bring up" the relevant table(s) in the results viewer. What is the results window's function? I'm learning; i'm making lots of mistakes. In spss i can delete the mistake (syntax and results tables) from the output window/file. Here, i can "clear" the entire window. Everything is gone. So far as i can tell, sas log and sas results, are separate, unconnected files. How do i come back a couple of years later to an analsys and connect log and results?

[Tom]

How do i come back a couple of years later to an analsys and connect log and results?

Because both are linear in time.  And the LOG clearly states what happened. It has notes on number of observations read/written etc.

And because you cannot do this:

In spss i can delete the mistake (syntax and results tables) from the output window/file. 

[Tom]

As you know spss normally opens with empty data / variable viewer windows. SAS does not; however it has viewtable, which i stumbled around and found under table editor. Even with a dataset open, e.g., data storm_cat5; set pg1.storm_summary; table editor/viewtable is blank.

Not sure what you are describing here.  If you are talking about using either SAS or SPSS as a data entry system I wouldn't do that. Perhaps for tiny amounts of data you can type the data in-line for a data step.  But otherwise enter you data using a system designed for that and then read it into datasets.

If you are talking about navigating and exploring existing files then the interface is pretty straight forward.  Open the libref you have defined to point to where your data is stored and then double click on the dataset name and you can see the data.

Personally I avoid a lot of the GUI things and just run code to see what is in the data.  PROC CONTENTS. PROC PRINT. etc.

[Tom]

SAS is trying to phase out Display Manager. At least they are not doing as much to update it as they are to SAS/Studio or Enterprise Guide.  You might be better off learning SAS/Studio interface instead.  Or if you really like the intermixed code/output style of SPSS then perhaps you should look into using Jupyter Notebook interface.

[Reeza]

I'll second Tom's answer. The majority of the features you're interested in are in SAS Studio. They stopped dev on DM probably at least 5 years ago to focus on EG and Studio. Or you can also use your own interface, such as NotePad++, and submit your programs to SAS.