Writing Custom SAS® Studio Tasks That Use CAS Actions for Advanced Analytics
Imagine that you want to develop SAS® code to build an analytical model in order to answer a business or research question of interest. This request is intentionally vague because it can be any model that you want to use, and the question of interest can be anything relevant to your domain or industry.
In addition, suppose you specifically want to develop the code by using the relatively new SAS® Cloud Analytic Services (CAS) language, or CASL for short, which is a scripting language available with SAS® Viya®. It could be that you want the additional flexibility or the access to more advanced options available with CASL. Or it could be that you have a collaborator who accesses CAS from an open source language such as R or Python, and you want to use CASL because its syntax is similar to the code you use to interact with CAS from those languages.
You could develop this code from scratch. But often it is more efficient to rely on existing code, such as examples from SAS documentation, blog posts, GitHub repositories, SAS® Global Forum papers, or previous code that you or a colleague wrote.
What if I told you that there is an even more efficient way to develop your code? What if I told you that you do not need to actually write the code, but instead you can use a graphical user interface that automatically generates the code for you?
SAS® Studio tasks do just that: they enable you to prepare and analyze your data without the need to write code (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Hidden Markov Models Task CASL Code Generation
Not only do tasks make SAS analytics accessible to noncoders, but the real-time code generation can also help you learn the syntax for the method of interest. This is especially useful as you migrate your analytics to SAS Viya and learn the syntax for CAS actions and CAS-enabled procedures.
In addition, even experienced SAS programmers can use these tasks to accelerate new code development. With just a few clicks and keystrokes, you can have several lines of formatted, typo-free CASL code that is not missing any commas or semicolons!
You can also customize the tasks to suit your needs. For example, if you or your colleagues routinely use a particular set of SAS procedures or CAS actions with different data sets and slightly different options, you can create and share a custom task to easily do exactly that.
Developing custom SAS Studio tasks that generate CASL code is the topic of my SAS Global Forum 2020 paper, “Tips for Writing Custom SAS Studio Tasks That Use CAS Actions for Advanced Analytics.”
The paper uses analytical actions in SAS® Econometrics software to walk you through the process of adding new functionality to the existing Hidden Markov Models task. Although it is possible to write custom tasks from scratch, you can create a copy of a predefined SAS task and then modify it. This is a great way to dip your toe into the custom-task-writing water.
To follow along with the paper, you need access to a CAS server that has a license for SAS Econometrics software. For more information about free software trials of SAS Viya, visit the SAS Trials website. Additional code that you need in order to finish Example 2 in the paper, along with the complete task code for both examples, is available in the SAS Global Forum 2020 GitHub repository.
Your comments and questions are valued and encouraged. Please post them to this article.
Recommended Resources
The following references are great resources for custom task writing:
- Corcoran, C., and Peters, A. (2015). “Teach Them to Fish—How to Use Tasks in SAS Studio to Enable Coworkers to Run Your Reports Themselves.” In Proceedings of the SAS Global Forum 2016 Conference. Cary, NC: SAS Institute Inc.
- Dexter, M., Kiser, K., Peters, A., and Corcoran, C. (2016). “Create Web-Based SAS Reports without Having to Be a Web Developer.” In Proceedings of the SAS Global Forum 2016 Conference. Cary, NC: SAS Institute Inc.
- Inman, E., and Wright, O. (2017). “Developing Your Own SAS Studio Custom Tasks for Advanced Analytics.” In Proceedings of the SAS Global Forum 2017 Conference. Cary, NC: SAS Institute Inc.
- SAS Institute Inc. (2019a). SAS Studio 5.2: Developer’s Guide to Writing Custom Tasks. Cary, NC: SAS Institute Inc.
- SAS Institute Inc. (2019b). “Writing a Custom Task for SAS Studio.” Free e-learning course. Cary, NC: SAS Institute Inc.
- Wright, O. (2019). “Custom Task Cheat Sheet.”
- Wright, O. (2019). Custom Task Tuesday (blog).
- Wright, O. (2020). “SAS Studio Custom Tasks: Tips and Tricks for the Adventurous Task Author.” In Proceedings of the SAS Global Forum 2020 Conference. Cary, NC: SAS Institute Inc.
