SAS Product Suggestions

Hi, It will be helpful to be able to reach data from alerting_evet table in Visual Investigator. There is a crucial need to develop an API that these tables will be able to "talk-each-other" in order to implement use-cases of workflow(s) to be routed successfully as the end-user defines.   For example, I'm struggle to retrieve data on scenarios that emerge as an alert. I understand that different scenarios could raise an individual alert, but most of the time the alert that generated a scenario event with the higher score is the one that users want to know and to be routed by it.   Thanks ... View more

Dear all! There should be a possibility to have piece of sas code included in several process flows. Currently this is actively inhibited by EG (at least as of 8.2) and there does not seem to be a real reason for this restriction ... and yes, there is%include but this is not always applicable in certain setups/environments. Cheers ... View more

Dear all! I would really fancy the opportunity of customizing the fonts used in dialogs. I find the font used in the query builder for advanced expressions expecially hard to read. Cheers ... View more

Dear community!   It appears to me, that the use of modal dialogs/windows in EG is unneccessarily high and could be reduced. This bites you when you need to look up information in some other part of EG to fill in a form in the foreground.   Cheers Fja ... View more

Sometimes you accidentally open one or more pieces of code into EG and they appear in the wrong process flow. Why can't you items between one process flow and another? ... View more

HI, you should be able to export from an EG project file stored processes, including prompts, to a file (a SAS package?), and then reimport it into another project, prompts intact. It seems like a pretty strange oversight that you can't do this. ... View more

    Hi all,   I know I've not that much experience, in the whole SAS environment and in SAS programming too but, since the time I started working with SAS EG projects, looking into SAS Community and in the net, I'm seeing a lot of questions (and great confusion, where I can also add mine) about "type casting", an area where, in other languages like C, there is no confusion at all: nearly all mature languages have their own typecast functions, explicit (java, C, etc.) or implicit (python) which "take care" to make the data having a "safe landing" into the target variables (or throw errors, if impossible or leads to data loss).   What I mean is: if some topic, main documentation apart, needs a so broad amount of "guides" and documents further explaining it (which I really never seen, in all my life, among other languages) there should be something wrong in the way it have been thought: apart the initial read I gave to the docs, I never needed to further read how to cast an int into a long, or have to take personally care about how var(string_value) decided to work on "3,14" to have 3.14 assigned to my num_short_pi numeric variable.   While using SAS I'm constantly banging my head against "typecast walls", all the time having to PUT something into my INPUT to have it converted etc. etc... so, after some time (as I initially thought it was my problem), I asked to myself "why not having an "intelligent typecast" function, which reads the source variable's type and, working behind the scenes, converts it into my target variable wanted data type?"   Thus this proposal: I know there is a CAST() function already but, from the few I read, it seems more related to proc sql (and even not all of it: works into FEDSQL), the proposal is to have it available "everywhere" (so even outside PROC SQL), in base SAS, as an alternative to PUT/INPUT. Then, with time, if SAS devs will see users using it more than original PUT/INPUT, they could decide to keep CAST only... or to remove it if, to the contrary, it won't be used at all.   Syntax: CAST(source variable, target variable, target variable desired type, [target variable format]);   source variable: any type (numeric or char) source variable name target variable: target variable name target variable desired type: wanted target type (numeric or char), if not defined before (optional) target variable format: the target format to apply to target variable desired type   As I'm not a SAS expert, even if I believe there shouldn't be problems in converting char-to-num or num-to-char, some problems could arise: this is why I wrote "target variable desired type": if desired type can't be achieved, e.g. there is data loss in the conversion, a warning should be raised, if the conversion can't take place at all, an error should be raised. As I told, I'm no expert, so feel free to improve this proposal with your expertise, which it's for sure far greather than mine. ... View more

The recently-used-file list in Enterprise Guide 8.2 is very helpful for reaching previous SAS programs. I can vary the number of items through Tools->Options->General, Number of Items to Display. However, my list is often filled with 5-10 dataset references for each SAS program that I opened. The dataset references are not useable because of the volatile nature of LIBNAMEs. I would like a way to specify that I only ever want *.sas program files in that list ... View more

Hi,   The viya-cli tool implicitly requires a direct link to sas.com Internet portal in order to install the plug-ins collection . Except for cloud jumpboxes or personal Macbook, on-premise installation within large organisations use company proxy servers to reach the internet, which means that    either viya-cli archive has to be provided, as a download archive, in sas.com portal in a portable version, including every plugin  OOTB inclusively (1),  or viya-cli install syntax must be able to use http/https proxy settings  (environment variables HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY) (2) or both !   The following discussion might imply that the option (2) is already planned in a future release.   How to use sas cli in proxy environment - SAS Support Communities   I checked the release sas-viya version 1.21.9 on Linux before posting.   Best Regards Ronan ... View more

For process flows with Auto arrange turned on, the default arrangement is vertical. There should be an option to allow a horizontal arrangement of process steps. For process steps that create many data sets, the vertical alignment causes excessive scrolling. If steps are arranged horizontally then one can view many process steps on a single screen without scrolling regardless of the number of generated data sets.   Please see the post below where I describe a workaround for this issue with screenshots.   Navigating SAS EG process flow map that is too large to scroll through - SAS Support Communities   It seems that allowing a horizontal auto arrange option will alleviate this problem.    ... View more

Hi Team, Since our organization increased the password guidelines standards for all the user accounts including service accounts, We want to follow the same set of standards for the SAS internal accounts. Is it possible to update/include the initial server-level policies for internal accounts for the below mentioned Password guideline standards by default in the SAS product instead of we customizing the omaconfig.xml file Excepted Password guideline standards: 1) Passwords are a minimum of 8 characters in length. 2) Programmatic account passwords are a minimum of 15 characters in length. (This might apply if this relates to programmatic accounts 3) Password complexity and expiration rules are enforced based upon the risk level of the Resource 4) Passwords are not reused for at least 6 iterations.   Please check the feasibility to enhance above password guidlines in the SAS software ... View more

Time ago, when I was working with RapidMiner, I took profit a lot by having sub-processes grouping the single graphic process' elements into kind of "black box" (programmers may call that "subroutines"). Now I'm working with SAS Enterprise Guide 7.15, under SAS 9.4, and I feel the lack of such custom elements.   It's nothing which changes that much the way SAS EG is working already: mostly a "visual help" to unclutter the current project's steps. Moreover, those (custom made) subprocesses could be re-used, along the project's steps, if given the ability to be parametrized (by means of configurable fields and/or in/out variables, like prompts), like every SAS element.   As far as I know, is nowadays possible to do the same by using a SAS program which groups features carried out by graphical elements (like query builder, sort data, etc.) into a single program "icon" (element). What I can see, is many SAS persons hardly work with programs, as they know much more the data than the algorythms (I'm more a programmer than a data scientist, that's why I think more to algorythms than data).   With complex projects, it happens to have many elements to manage and, sometimes, we may want them to be "just grouped" so to see their results, more than the single item's activity.   Let me show why I was thinking to subprocesses. Me and colleagues are developing a project which is already complex enough, having many elements per step. At some point, we felt the need to add "test points" to the process, to know, from outside the system, "at which point the whole project was executed, and with which timing" and to let other colleagues, which uses that project but not having SAS access, the same informations: the project is scheduled to start everyday at 01:00am so, when they start working, having such "test points" added, they know if all gone well, and me and developers to  know the performances/timing, by looking at exported small PDF files' date/time. (I'm pretty sure there are better ways to carry out the same functions but they're just an excuse, here, to allow me to show you why I was thinking to subprocesses).   In blue you can see the "test points" we added, not that good view: they're made by 4 elements which I expanded above in yellow. It was probably better to have a single, custom made, "Test Point" element, including the above ones and to be configured with the table's name to read, and the PDF path/filename to export. That's my need of the moment, but I'm sure the very same can be told for many projects having recurring "sparse elements" cluttering the project's steps.   As far as I've seen, up to now, SAS EG components' hierarchy is made by:   project (the whole "container") ! steps ! elements (even grouped into programs)   The idea is to insert subprocesses in the hierarchy:   project ! steps ! subprocess (custom made elements grouping elements) ! elements   ... View more

The ability to synchronize axis would be a great addition to the dual axis graphs. Having two different axis can be misleading and confusing. Right now it is possible to bypass unsynchronized axis by setting a fixed minumum and maximum. However, fixed axis is not considered ideal as new values can be higher or lower than the fixed values (e.g. when reporting on a new month). Therefore, a dynamic solution such as synchronizing axis would be ideal.  ... View more

A functionality which allows for a container or graph to be visible or hidden based on a value chosen in a control. This dynamic funtionality would simultaneously allow for sheet swapping.  ... View more