Base SAS? Enterprise Guide? SAS studio?

[braam]

I've been always using Base SAS for years. At times, I open SAS Enterprise Guide when I would like to see my dataset, which is faster than looking at the dataset in Base SAS. I am just curious about pros and cons of Enterprise Guide, compared to SAS Base. Does Enterprise Guide enable me to structure my code and sets in an easier way?

I also noticed that there is SAS studio. Is it totally for tutorials and practices? Thanks in advance.

[hashman]

@braam:

I assume that by "Base SAS" you mean its native Display Manager System (DMS) interface. As to the UI choice, it's mostly suum cuique. 

Mine has always been DMS for a variety of reasons, one of which is that one is most productive with the tool one has mastered well. Another is that one needs nothing but the application server to run it, and on many occasions I'd be able to continue working while everybody tethered to EGuide or Studio was waiting for the admin to restart the metadata server or fix something else. Also, being able to use the Program Editor (yes, that one, the ISPF clone, not the Enhanced) is invaluable to me.

I've used both EGuide and Studio when either DMS wasn't available or their use was dictated by a client. Don't care about 80 percent of what EGuide offers. But then I'm mostly an individual contributor, and I know some people who swear by the EGuide's project management facility.    

Studio is not just for tutorials and practices. As an IDE environment, it IMO leaves a whole lot to be desired. However, it includes the ability to create a pretty crude but usable UI (e.g. to let users run reports) with the aid of the pretty crude but not difficult to master VLT (Apache Velocity Template) language (it took me a few days from zero to become useful). Nobody in the group I was part of for a few months, where Studio was the only formally available SAS UI, used it do develop code, except for running code developed in Notepad++, Ultraedit, VS, etc. and trying some snippets during program development. If I needed to browse SAS data sets (not to mention edit, which at least in 3.8 cannot be done), filter them, research, etc., I'd just surreptitiously fire up DMS natively on the Linux app server. BTW, nobody on the team, except a contractor about as seasoned as I am, had every used DMS.

Since I thus had had some recent experience with Studio, I took part in the SAS Studio beta lab at the last SAS GF organized by its developers to gauge user response to its newest version. The UI had changed quite a bit visually from 3.8 I had been using (so finding familiar things in the new beta version wasn't easy). My understanding was that the goal was to make it feel and look more like EGuide, but my impression was that it was nowhere near. One thing I really liked about it was the DATA step debugger - really well designed (way better that in DMS) and intuitive enough for me to start using it without any learning curve at all.   

FWIW

Paul D.

[SASKiwi]

I think it is worth pointing out that the SAS Windowing Environment aka Display Manager is now a legacy interface. As such it has not received any significant enhancements for many years and that is unlikely to change.

On the other hand SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Studio have evolved rapidly in the last few years. I recommend you give the latest EG 8.1 a try. It is pretty darn good. For example, it now includes a no-project option if you just want to code, the DM tabbing layout and multi-monitor support amongst many other improvements.

[braam]

Thanks for your answers. I usually open several SAS code files that are inter-related. Even though there is one primary code file I work on every moment, I, sometimes, have to look at/revise the related other codes. With this in mind, I prefer opening them together in my SAS window. In such a case, is SAS EG still worth it? Just so you know, I'm a social science researcher, and when I work on SAS, I usually work on data management (correcting some issues in raw sets, merging multiple files, calculating some variables (from easy ones to quite complicated ones, etc.), which perhaps account for 90% of my SAS time.

[SASKiwi]

@braam - I think you will find the EG 8.1 tabbing paradigm to your liking...

Check it out here: https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Enterprise-Guide/Introducing-SAS-Enterprise-Guide-8-1/m-p/569293

[ChrisNZ]

Another point:

When compared to the DMS's responsiveness, I find that EG is very much click-and-wait. 

When running code in the DMS, you can see the log in real time, the results and data appear immediately.

In EG, every click involves some waiting, and if you (manage to) stop a process half-way, the log is usually empty.

A line of code that runs on 0 seconds takes that long in the DMS.

In EG, you wait for the program to talk to the server, then you get asked whether you want to overwrite the previous run, then you wait for the result to come back. 

The only thing I like in EG is that there is one log per program.

The thing I like least in EG is how often it crashes.

My 2 cents of course....

[hashman]

@ChrisNZ: These two pennies are minted out of 24k gold.

[braam]

Thank you for your comment. So, it takes longer in EG than DMS for every step, even a simple one.

I mostly work with data management, make my code, and run line-by-line. So, DMS sounds more convenient for me. Perhaps I can, at times, take advantage of EG. Thanks!

[Quentin]

Typically when people use EG, they are running EG as a local app, connecting to a remote SAS session running on a remote server.  It is not that every step run in EG is slower than PC SAS.  Code execution could be much faster, depending on your server.  But every time you click submit, EG needs to transfer your code to the server, then execute the code, then transfer log and output back to your PC.  Not surprisingly, it's not as snappy as running a pure local application like DM.

That said, it is possible to connect EG to a local SAS session.  I haven't tried it, but would be interesting to see how it feels with that setup.

I've been using EG a good bit over the past few years, writing code not clicking around.  I like it is a code editor.  And I like the idea of an EG project as a logical collection of related programs.  I don't actually build EG process flows, because my code runs either as a batch job or as a stored process.  But I'm happy to be able to open an EG project, and have links to all the program files that are used by the project.  I also still use DM, and there are times in DM I find myself missing EG features.

I haven't found the EG code submission / return results lag to be too painful, except in nightmarish situations where we had local EG connected to a server on the other side of the globe.

My understanding is Studio and EG are slowly growing together, ultimately likely to become a single app.  EG started as a tool for non-programmers, and then SAS started building more stuff for programmers into it (linked code, debugger, tabs, etc.).  I think Studio is on a similar development path.

[ChrisNZ]

Line-by-line execution is where the DMS would be most advantageous compared to EG, no doubt.

[SASKiwi]

@braam , @ChrisNZ  - There are ways tp speed up EG, and the best one I think is to turn off the automatic output of datasets by setting the maximum number to 0. Also in EG 8.1 you can switch off project mode if you are just coding and that is faster again. You can also turn off the output replacement question as well.

If EG is not returning logs with minimal processing pretty much straight away then there is most likely a network bottleneck between EG and your remote SAS server. This is my experience anyway. 

[ChrisNZ]

@SASKiwi  Yes, turning off the automatic opening of output tables saves valuable time. It's far from a panacea though.