Beginners: how to use sas studio

[Prachi_KaPatel]

Hello everyone, 

I just started to learn SAS Programming. SAS has wonderful course which helps to learn language from very beginning. Hands-on -labs are good and extensive but I find problem while reading description, I can not figure it out whether I am supposed to run files on SAS studio virtual machine or in my own machine ? 

Can anyone in this community help me here please? Everyone please share your experience while learning first SAS programming language through their official available courses. 

Thank you. Looking forward your support.

[SASJedi · Accepted solution]

A good way to practice SAS is to use SAS on Demand for Academics, available for free - you just need to create a free SAS profile. It uses SAS Studio as the programming interface, and most free "getting started" SAS tutorials and classes include instructions on how to run the workshop code there. 

[Cynthia_sas]

Hi: You have several choices for how to practice. As already recommended, you can use SAS OnDemand for Academics with SAS Studio as your interface. OR, you can use your own local installation of SAS. However, please keep in mind that you need to have SAS 9.4 Maintenance level 3 or higher in your local version of SAS in order to run the class and practice everything on your own system.
Most of our programming courses have explicit instructions for different methods of practicing. If you look in the Course Overview section of the class, you should see a topic about any required setup and in that topic, we will have instructions for each separate method of practicing. So you can choose which method you want to use. So you don't really need to make a decision with every practice, you decide one time, up front, how you are going to practice. If you want to use the Hands-On Lab, we have instructions for that method. If you want to use SAS OnDemand for Academics, we have instructions for that method. If you want to use your own license for SAS at work, with Enterprise guide, we have instructions for that method. Etc, etc. I believe that in the Programming 1 class set up, we show 5 possible methods of practicing with explicit instructions for each different method. You choose one time which method you're going to use. The demos are performed using SAS Studio on the instructors lab machine. What you see in the demos will most look like the configuration in the Hands-On Lab image. However, as an example, where the instructor shows a data folder location on her Windows machine in a LIBNAME statement on SAS Studio of:
s:\workshop\EPG1V2\data
you would use
/home/u12345678/EPG1V2/data
if you were using SAS OnDemand for Academics on a Linux server as your method (where you see u12345678 you'd substitute your own userID for SAS OnDemand). -- note how the class folders -- EPG1V2 and data are the same using both methods and how the part of the folder path that's different is the part that is specific to the operating system that you're working on.

Hope this helps minimize the confusion.
Cynthia