Often times i  have had scenarios where the users needed to look at an Excel file having significant number rows ( > 100K)  and also columns ( > 40)  .  To create such a file, I  have tried tagsets but they all fell short of expectations of size and performance.  Since  ODS EXCEL produces native .xlsx binary files occupying much less size compared to all other methods I would like to propose that this Destination be improved to ensure large tables can also be exported to Excel via this method. Obviously, this Destination  right now does suffer from memory issues when dealing with large tables  as noted here    http://support.sas.com/kb/56/985.html   Some workarounds suggested are splitting large tables etc but this not always welcome by the users.  I  currently use  Base SAS  9.4M4 and this issue still exists. Increasing MEMSIZE system option also does not always help.  I  do understand this is not an easy issue to address considering how the Destination was designed but would like to see if SAS R&D  can come up with some good improvements in the near future.    This improvement would also be useful for companies which have  BASE SAS   but not necessarily are willing to invest money to buy SAS/ACCESS  Interface to PC Files software and thus using PROC EXPORT with .xlsx files is completely ruled out.   What do others think of this?   ... View more

It would be useful to have an informat like MDYAMPMw.d but for us non-US users. ... View more

If you stop all tasks, sometimes one with respond with a status of  'stopping...' forever.  So, you have to kill the program, start up EG again and try to get back to where you were.     So, if SAS can kill the task when exiting EG, why can't it just kill the task and allow me to continue?  Just kill the task immediately! No 'stopping...' message should ever appear. ... View more

Often when developing a project using Query Builder, occasionally you have to go back a few steps and remove a variable. It would be helpful to have the option to also remove the variable upstream if desired. Or a prompt/message box telling you where it is used and lets you choose to remove it from those locations if desired to.  ... View more

I have been working with SAS now about 2 years. Coming from other softwares like SATA, I loved the flexibility of SAS code, the diversity and the power. However, many things could be imrpoved, especially when it comes to the way SAS uses/displayes the data variables/table columns. STATA had a great feature: It displayed the names of the data variables / tables columns headers in a tab so that you dont need to remeber them or get en error when you misspell them. Double clicking the variable name in STATA inserts it into the line code directly, which is very handy This becomes very frustrating in SAS when you are working on multiple projects, each of which might have several tables and tens of variables. SAS enterprise with its Intellisense/auto-complete, but nevertheless the feature dosent always solve the issue (still needs improving) I am wondering whether there is a way in SAS to get the variables displayed like STATA or is it a feature that should be requested to make life easier when using SAS? SAS Studio (online version) dose have this feature by the way... though you cant double click it to insert into code text like STATA Kind regards Am ... View more

The ability to automatically bin values in maps.   This would allow users to control how sizes and colours are assigned to maps, giving much more control over the way the maps look.   Users would ideally have following options:   Equal sized ranges User specifies number of ranges and VA automatically calculates the boundaries and groups items   Custom ranges User specifies the boundaries for ranges to use as bins   Equal sized bins User specifies the number of bins and VA automatically calculates ranges that group equal numbers of items together.   Standard Deviation VA calculates the median and then sets ranges at 1 SD intervals   All above options would need to work dynamically and auto adjust if the user filtered the map content.   Below is a screen grab from a popular GIS that offers this functionality   ... View more

If I edit a program entry in EG, I have find, replace, and line/column numbers (and perhaps other features).   If I edit the SAS code for a stored process in EG, I get a crippled editor with none of these features.   I have a stored process that's 1000+ lines long.  If I get an error in the log, it would be handy to be able to search the code for the offending line.  If I'm trying to get the indentation right on a block of code that doesn't fit in the editor, having the column number would help.   In short, have *consistent* editor functionality in both scenarios (as well as any other place in EG where you can edit code). ... View more

When using Visual Analytics (version 7.2) for external reports, I very much recommend a functionality to hide og mask specific cells. Working with detailed data and plotting cross-tables on multiple categoric variables, you will often run in to combinations and statistics based on a limited number of observations. As such statistics can very well be insignificant, it should be possible to hide these and set up specific criterias for hiding - that is, without taking out any data.   In VA it is possible to filter out fx rows in a table based on a specialized filter. But this leads to taking out the specific observations, and it changes all aggregate sums in the table.    In VA it is also possible to change the style based on specific expressions. Fx, I can change the color of the cell-values in a cross-table to red, indicating an insignificant value. The expression could be a criteria on the no. of observations that the value is based on ie. the frequency. Unfortunately this criteria can only be defined if the frequency column is already in the the table - and I'm not interested in showing no. of observations in an external report. A way out (and maybe an easy one to start with) could be making it possible to change style based on expressions on all possible dependent variables in the data.   In my opinion, masking and hiding data to external recipients should be regarded as very important if VA is considered a tool for external reporting. If you cannot control data completely all value of making external reports disappears.   For now, I will have to aggregate data in SAS BASE defining my criterias in data before loading them into SAS VA. This closes down all analytic possibilities in VA, and I might as well just make an Excel report for my clients instead.   I sincerely hope for development.   Best wishes Mikkel ... View more

When EG freezes, there is no way of knowing which EG session to kill.   Variable SYSJOBID gives the SAS server proces number. A way to know the local EG process number would allow us to save it somewhere (a text file saved in the work directory at connection time for example).   A startup option to have this process number added to the window title would be another way to deal with this ongoing problem.     ... View more

Many users have asked me how to show the load date of the LASR tables used in reports. The information is available in the administrator menu, it would be very convenient to have it in the information panel of the reports. ... View more

At the time of this idea's addition to the list, I believe that Google "believes" that it is best for me to see search results involving SAS Base code reference material for SAS version 9.2 when in fact I'm using version 9.4. Using Enterprise Guide to make Google queries will not ask Google to prefer 9.x over 9.2.  What I propose is that EG makes requests for the SAS reference webpages and explicitly includes the SAS base version, if applicable.   This is a good idea because, since this feature was turned on around SAS Base 9.2, a consequence is that Google will "default" to search for 9.2 refrerence material forever.  By  "default" I mean Google will choose search results based on its metrics which may be based on what links were clicked more often historically.  Since 9.2 links were searched so much more before than others, their prority may be placed at the top of the seach page more often.  Leaving this feature alone, it may be that Google will continue to give 9.2 versions of reference material webpages link priority as our users continually accept Google's first search result links (ussualy SAS 9.2), and so perpetuating the, IMO, falsely generated popularity of SAS 9.2 in Google searches.    ... View more

This would allow code like   %if &i=1  ## comment 1   | &i=2  ## comment 2   | &i=3  ## comment 3 %then %let i=4;   The only method for these comments atm is to use /* */ comments, which I avoid as I reserve /* */  to comment out large blocks of text on an ad-hoc basis (debugging, rerunning parts of a program).   And of course blocks of text cannot be commented out if they contain /* */ comments themselves. If they do, the only way to comment them out if to enclose them in dummy macros, which can cause other issues.   [Edit: Replaced // with ## in my example, as // is commonly used to skip lines in put statements. I don't mind what characters are used.]   ... View more

It would be nice to have a check box option for the slider control to hide the actual slider and only show the date picker icons. The slider can take up a fair amount of screen real estate and from a user interface perspective, it can be less confusing to show just the date pickers. ... View more

I would like to see query builders have an option to perform a SELECT * statement.  For instance, I don't believe the following is possible using a query builder:   PROC SQL;   CREATE TABLE WORK.TMP AS   SELECT t1.*, MAX(t1.Age) AS Max_Age   FROM SASHELP.CLASS t1   GROUP BY t1.Sex; QUIT;   Currently when you right click on a table in the left hand pane and choose "Select All Columns" it inserts each column separately and ends up building the following code:   PROC SQL;    CREATE TABLE WORK.TMP AS    SELECT t1.Name,           t1.Sex,           t1.Age,           t1.Height,           t1.Weight,           /* Max_Age */             (MAX(t1.Age)) AS Max_Age       FROM SASHELP.CLASS t1       GROUP BY t1.Sex; QUIT;   I often have very long process flows with several query builders that are bringing all columns forward with them.  If I add a new column to a table at the beginning of the flow, I then have to open each subsequent query builder and add the column.  Having a special "select all" row in the select data tab of the query builder would alleviate this issue. ... View more

In Exploration mode, when creating a bar chart, the legend is sorted alphabetically, which may not be the same order that the bars are displayed.  It would be nice if the order of the legend and the display could be synced up.  In Report mode, the legend is in the same order as the bars are displayed.  But when I'm exporting an Exploration as a Report, the only way to overcome this limitation (and keep calculated items) is to create a new bar chart. ... View more

The FDA asked us to use a method other than Wald and strongly suggested that we use Miettinen-Nurminen 1985 (MN) for computing confidence limits (CL) at summary level. This method is becoming increasingly popular and is used by many pharmaceutical companies, including Merck, Abbvie, and Moderna (cf. simple Google search). SAS has provided a partial implementation of MN scoring through COMMONRISKDIFF(CL=score) where the within-stratum calculation follows MN 1985 but inverse-variance stratum weights are used at the summary level. This method comes from the 2013 Agresti book. Has this method ever been published in a peer-reviewed article? Has it ever been used in a clinical trial submission? Is this method popular, i.e., number of citations? The lack of visibility in the use of this "SCORE" method prevent the use of this algorithm in a submission to health authorities.   The current alternative is to use R. Indeed, two packages have been developed to calculate CL based on MN 1985 method: metalite.ae (Merck) and scoreci. SAS users have already written about this 4 years ago.  I am a biostatistical manager at Bristol Myers Squibb. This issue has risen to the VP level as we plan to adopt MN 1985 in all our submissions in all the therapeutic areas. Confidence limits play an important role because they influence key analyses such as futility analysis for the primary outcome. Will you provide this algorithm and if so, when? ... View more

Request to SAS: Please provide, in every SAS version, a tool to convert files/catalogs between 32 and 64 bit (without the need to buy a licence for a new 'SAS module'). This should not be a problem for experienced (SAS) programmer. Thanks. ... View more

SAS studio is missing the Prompt feature from SAS Enterprise guide. The current work around is difficult and if we were to use SAS studio as a replacement for Enterprise Guide, we need this feature. ... View more

Please allow the syntax   data T1; set A(gennum=174) - A(gennum=187); run; ... View more