Practice Data for Intro Course

[mfitzpatrick]

Hello, 
I am doing the intro programming course for 9.4 through LinkedIn Learning. It is the same course offered from SAS.  The data set up is complex. There are two .zip files.  I downloaded and unzipped. In the (very, very long) pathnames created, there was a file for data set up. It wouldn't run because it assumed pathnames for files that were being created, and also seemed to be itself trying to unzip the files. Second, I searched help here and found one thread with a link to a fairly long program that is supposed to be setting up practice data on my local machine. I ran it in SAS Studio.  It basically ran and set up a number of data structures in my machines "<username>/My SAS" directory but there were 107 errors due to attempting to write (apparently) to a table in a folder without write access. This should not be that hard. I'm just trying to get the practice data (one file, for example is storm data and the instructor refers to the storm.xlsx file -- I can't find that anywhere).  Advice would be appreciated.  Thank you.  (p.s. I'm kind of surprised these programs would assume path names & just start writing with no prompt to the user, or instructions within the program to set up the desired location.)

[Cynthia_sas]

Hi,

  The challenge with the LinkedIn Learning version of the class was that the instructions assume that you are using a local copy of SAS on your own machine and the instructions were really not written to support any other platform. The other challenge is that the version of the course that's on LinkedIn is an older version of the course. Programming 1 is free for any independent learner on our e-learning server (not LinkedIn) and our server has the newest version of the training class AND the best news of all is that we have a really easy program on our server, with a different zip file that is designed specifically for using with SAS OnDemand for Academics.

  If you are not committed in stone to taking the class on the LinkedIn platform, I'd recommend at least taking a look at our version of the training. In order to post you had to set up a SAS Profile, so all you need to do is go here https://support.sas.com/edu/elearning.html?ctry=us&productType=library  and click the orange Start Now button for Programming 1 at the top of the page. When prompted to log onto your SAS Profile, do that and then accept the terms of use. The section with the explicit directions and the new zip file for SAS OnDemand is called "Course Overview and Data Setup".

  The biggest difference between the 2 versions of the class other than the setup instructions are that the LinkedIn Course still uses the folder reference of EPG194 and the newest version of the course uses a folder entitled EPG1V2. The other difference is that we added a few new videos to demonstrate using Enterprise Guide 8 instead of Enterprise Guide 7. And, of course, we fixed some of the typos we found in the older course.

Cynthia

ps...if you want to stick with Linked In and can't figure out how to get the data creation program to run, then you'll need to send mail to elearn@sas.com so we can help you directly. BTW, the setup program assumes that you have a fixed path name on SAS OnDemand for Academics, something like:

/home/<yourUserID>/EPG194/data  (for the older course)

or

/home/<yourUserID>/EPG1V2/data (for the newer course)

On other platforms, such as local versions of SAS or Enterprise Guide, you must provide the full pathname before you run the data creation program.

[mfitzpatrick]

Thank you! I will try the SAS version of the training.