April 2026

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A Bloomberg-Inspired Market Intelligence Dashboard

LLM Terminal: A Bloomberg-Inspired Market Intelligence Dashboard
Falko Schulz's Bloomberg-inspired “LLM Terminal” built in SAS Visual Analytics delivers a high–data-density, dark-mode dashboard that lets users quickly compare large language models by intelligence, pricing, scale, and context using live, regularly refreshed data.

Dear Reader,

SAS Innovate 2026 has officially wrapped, and what an incredible event it was! From inspiring keynotes to deep technical sessions, the conference once again delivered meaningful insights and real-world takeaways, and if you missed anything (or want a second look), there are plenty of on-demand sessions available to watch at your convenience.

One unforgettable moment at SAS Innovate was celebrating our 2025 SAS Hackathon Champions. Congratulations to DementAI, crowned our overall 2025 SAS Hackathon Grand Champion, for developing an AI‑driven system designed to identify Alzheimer’s disease up to two years sooner than existing approaches.

Looking ahead, SAS Hackathon 2026 kicks off on October 1, with registration opening in June. This global, virtual hackathon invites teams to tackle real-world challenges and industry use cases using the latest SAS technology, with hands-on access to SAS Viya, expert mentoring, and a collaborative environment to design, build, and validate solutions from proof of concept to production-ready ideas.

Ready to join the hack? Use the SAS Hackathon Checklist to stay on track, and join the interest list to be the first to know when registration opens!

Thiago De Souza
Editor, SAS Tech Report

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Tips & tricks

SAS Innovate 2026: Will people matter as AI scales?
From the SAS Innovate 2026 keynote, Caslee Sims explains why human judgment, trust, and governance remain essential as AI and agentic workflows scale.

From question to clarity: how SAS Viya Copilot changes the way we work with data
Sasha Karpinski explains how SAS Viya Copilot uses conversational AI inside Visual Analytics to help users explore data, build visuals, and generate insights faster using natural language.

From fraud detection to fraud resolution: Building an AI voice agent with SAS Viya and LLMs
Xavier Bizoux shows how SAS Viya and large language models can power an AI voice agent that moves fraud management from detection to real-time customer resolution.

Help me type, the sas-viya CLI supports auto-complete
Written by Bruno Mueller, this article explains how the sas‑viya command-line interface now supports auto‑completion, making it faster and easier to manage SAS Viya services from the terminal.

Optimizing inspector assignments using SAS Optimization in federal and state meat processing facilit...
Shahrzad Azizzadeh and team show how SAS Optimization models complex workforce and routing constraints to improve inspection coverage while controlling costs.

Tips and Tricks for Power Users of SAS® Visual Text Analytics: Problematic CDRs
Lois Wright shares advanced techniques to help SAS Visual Text Analytics users diagnose and fix problematic concept-definition rules to improve extraction accuracy.

Visualize the placement of knots for regression splines
Rick Wicklin explains and visualizes how knot placement impacts regression splines, helping analysts interpret spline-based models more effectively.

The sample median is a biased estimator for skewed distributions
Through theory and simulation, Rick Wicklin shows why the sample median is biased for skewed distributions and why that matters in statistical analysis.

One-pass formulas for mean and variance
Rick Wicklin revisits Welford’s one-pass algorithm for efficiently computing mean and variance, with modern applications in streaming data and simulation.

Use case

Delivering new levels of transparency and equity in carbon market transactions
FairClimateFund uses SAS Viya and data-driven transparency to connect low-income households to global carbon markets, enabling cleaner cooking solutions while ensuring carbon credit revenue directly benefits the communities that generate it.

For developers

Introducing PROC R: The Newest Way to Integrate R and SAS (Part 1)
The newest and arguably most seamless way to integrate R and SAS is with the R procedure (PROC R). It lets you run R code directly inside SAS, while keeping your data in the SAS ecosystem. Enjoy and get informed with this SAS Communities article by SAS’s Shelby Taylor.

Upcoming learning events

(Each Ask the Expert webinar is one hour and complimentary unless stated otherwise.)

Virtual Classes presented by WUSS
Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS) is excited to announce that virtual classes will be returning for the Spring 2026 season. They will be offering several of their most popular live, half-day training classes taught by seasoned industry experts. These classes are a tremendous value at just $99 per class. All classes are held from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm PT.

Ask the Expert: Demystifying Macro Masking Functions
Join this webinar on Tuesday, May 5 at 11:00 AM EST to explore the most commonly used masking functions of the SAS macro language. You will learn to use masking functions for special characters like:

Ampersand (Smith & Sons).
Apostrophe (Mary’s Market).
Comma (as a macro function argument).

Ask the Expert: Effective Methods for Working With SAS Date Values
Join this webinar on Tuesday, May 12 at 11:00 AM EST to explore how to build and extract date information, plus advanced techniques for generating dynamic, flexible date values. You will learn:

SAS date functions.
SAS date formats.
How to use the macro facility to create dates.

Ask the Expert: Welcome to SAS® Viya®
Join this webinar on Thursday, May 14 at 10:00 AM EST to explore and learn how to make the most of your data and AI investment. You will learn how to:

Understand the core qualities and basic architecture of SAS Viya.
Use the suite of SAS Viya applications to manage and explore data, develop models and deploy insights.
Develop code using either SAS or Python in SAS Viya.

Ask the Expert: Where Does My SQL Process?
Join this webinar on Thursday, May 21 at 11:00 AM EST to learn different ways to access and analyze database tables using SQL on the SAS® Viya® platform. You will learn how to:

Access and analyze database tables using SQL on the SAS Viya platform.
Use the familiar SQL procedure to work with database tables.
Accelerate your SQL queries in SAS Viya using the CAS engine.

Ask the Expert: Advanced Data Collection and Insights in SAS Customer Intelligence 360
Join this webinar on Thursday, May 28 at 9:00 AM EST to explore how to get your customers’ web behavior data to keep pace with ever-changing websites. You will learn how: