December 2024

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With the 2024 SAS Hackathon in the books, SAS’ Falko Schulz created a SAS® Visual Analytics report to offer insight into the competition. He used a portrait precision layout configuration for this infographic with individual containers focusing on different statistics. Along with some text analytics to understand general topics of team submissions, it also shows the geographical distribution and number of participants by team and industry track.

Dear Reader:

As 2024 ends, the temptation to look back and take stock is strong. But let’s save the specifics for the January issue, which will recap some of the past year’s most popular Tech Report content.

Meanwhile, there's something to look forward to in 2025 – the Customer Recognition Awards! Along with the annual SAS Hackathon (see visualization above), it’s another way to showcase your accomplishments using SAS® software in the past year. You may recall reading about this year’s winners in a SAS Support Community post. If they won, why not you? Check out the blurb below to learn more and start working on your entry.

Wishing all of you a joyful holiday season!

Happy reading!

Bev Brown
Editor, Tech Report

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2025 SAS Customer Recognition Awards

Share your success story for a chance to win!
We want to celebrate the great work you’re doing with SAS® software! Submissions for the 2025 SAS Customer Recognition Awards are now open through January 31, 2025. Online voting and a judging panel determine the winners. Winners will be announced LIVE at SAS Innovate in Orlando, Florida, May 6-9, 2025. First-place winners in each category get a trip to SAS Innovate*, a SAS trophy and SAS swag.

*Visit the SAS Customer Recognition Awards site for details.

Tech tips with Chris

I'm a "SAS first" kind of guy. If I can complete a data or programming task using SAS, that's what I'm going to do. But if there is a best practice or less complex approach that uses another programming language, then I'm happy to go on that path.

That's why SAS Viya Workbench is my new favorite tool for SAS programming work. It's easy to spin up and load a project from a Git repository. All of my SAS code works great within it, and when I need something a little extra, like a Python task, I can accomplish that in the same environment.

One of my favorite things about SAS Viya Workbench is how easy it is to apply the things that I already know about using SAS in this brand-new environment. In the field of User Experience, this is called positive transference. I have many established habits and tricks that I’ve learned by using other SAS tools, as well as by using Visual Studio Code for other projects. All of these come together to make it easy for me to be productive in SAS Viya Workbench, where things just work as I expect them to!

I invite you to check out my short demos: running a Wordle-like game in SAS, connecting to Microsoft 365 in SAS code, and using Python with SAS to access and analyze Google Analytics. Let me know what you think, and what you might like to see next!

Tips & tricks

Create a Christmas tree with SAS software
SAS’ Rick Wicklin reveals in his latest DO Loop post how to build your holiday tree using the most important probability distribution in statistics.

Find out how to do correlation analysis on two groups of variables using the WITH statement in PROC ...
This analysis uses the NOMISS option on the PROC CORR statement to perform listwise deletion of missing values. Although PROC IML does not natively support correlation between two data matrices, you can easily write a function that performs the analysis. An appendix at the end of Rick Wicklin’s DO Loop post provides the function definition.

Learn how SAS is fixing food stamp errors and helping families in need
In the US, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) serves an average of more than 42 million people, more than 12% of US residents. Errors and system glitches often result in payment inaccuracies, which can cause significant hardships for these families. Recognizing the urgent need for improvements, SAS has developed the SAS Payment Integrity for Food Assistance model to address and mitigate these issues.

Get acquainted with the SAS Viya Job Execution Web Application
In the SAS 9.4 world, SAS Stored Processes (STP) were popular. An STP is a SAS program that is stored on a server and can be executed as required by requesting applications. On SAS 9.4, they were widely used for web reporting, analytics, building web applications, delivering packages to customers and publishing results to channels or repositories. With SAS Viya, STPs have taken on a new form, requiring a different method of interaction. SAS’ Rodney Brown, through use cases, walks you through how to modernize STP in SAS Viya.

Gain insight into SAS® 9 Application Usage reports
This SAS Community post reviews information these reports provide, conclusions that can be drawn from them and possible actions you could take after reviewing the information.

Discover how to visualize IoT data with a Grafana plugin
In this SAS Community Library article, you’ll learn the steps to add a Grafana plugin to SAS Event Stream Processing (release 2022.07 or later). You’ll end up with a dashboard that shows the current location of the International Space Station (ISS) in real time with a Geomap.

Find out how to create a Model Nutrition Label: Model Cards for SAS Studio Models
Our first iteration of Model Cards focused on prediction and classification models developed in SAS Model Studio and models developed using Python. Now? Via Import Model macros, there’s a way to build a complete model card for SAS classification and prediction models trained in SAS Studio.

Learn to create snappy, eye-catching email headers with GenAI
Emailed offers and announcements abound and can overwhelm. Standing out in an inbox can mean the difference between an email being opened and read or ignored. In SAS Customer Intelligence 360, Generative AI email headers can help you craft enticing subject lines.

Get familiar with point-and-click SAS Studio Custom Steps
@Wilbram-SAS introduces a collection of code snippets for SAS Studio Custom Step authors.

Set up new SAS Viya jobs for success
SAS’ @GregTreiman provides guidance on how to use SAS Viya job samples, including both code and forms.

Learn to manipulate data in Base SAS
The @SASJedi reveals the importance of standardizing character data in order to accurately impute missing values, conduct analysis or create meaningful reports.

Discover CAS elasticity: 4 real-world use cases
SAS' @NicolasRobert takes a deep dive into what makes CAS elastic, explore four real-world use cases and provides a guide to setting up table rebalancing and what it means for you.

Tune in as Bryan Harris shares third-party research on SAS Viya
The Futurum Group reveals how SAS Viya outperformed commercial and non-commercial alternatives, delivering over 4x greater productivity and 30x faster performance.

Meet SAS Viya Workbench for Learners
With SAS Viya Workbench for Learners, our free cloud-based modeling and development environment, students and educators can build programming skills, create AI and machine learning models, and complete projects quickly using their preferred language. (Approved academic email required.)

Watch SAS Viya in action
Jared Peterson, SAS Senior VP of R&D, explores the full SAS Viya software portfolio, demonstrating how it supports the entire data and AI lifecycle to boost productivity, enhance performance and maximize ROI. You’ll learn how to unlock greater value from your data.

Watch SAS Viya Workbench in action
SAS Software Developer Joseph Henry demos SAS Viya Workbench, a self-service, on-demand compute platform that boosts productivity for developers and data scientists. You’ll learn to streamline analytical development and AI/ML model creation.

Use case

Find out how Lockheed Martin transforms aircraft maintenance and fleet management with SAS analytics...
Lockheed Martin, a leader in aerospace, meticulously designs its aircraft for unique purposes, from lifting heavy cargo off sinking ships to traveling at supersonic speeds. A common problem: parts fail over time. Predictive maintenance improves fleet readiness and reduces costs.

For developers

SAS Viya Copilot VS Code Plugin
SAS has released a VS Code plugin to assist with generating SAS code. The copilot plugin is a personal assistant that helps with everything from administrative analytics tasks to solving industry-specific business problems. It could change how data professionals work, helping them be more productive and streamline processes. Find more details in these two articles: Let Copilot be your guide you to efficient coding and 3 ways you can use a copilot in SAS.

SAS Innovate 2025: Register Now
Registration is now open for SAS Innovate 2025, our biggest and most exciting global event of the year! Join us in Orlando, FL, May 6-9. Sign up by Dec. 31 to get the 2024 rate of just $495.

Upcoming learning events

(Each is one hour and complimentary.)

Beyond Macro – Data-Driven Programming in SAS® Viya®
Join SAS’ Mark Jordan at 11:00 a.m. ET on Thurs., Jan. 16 to learn how to use the CAS programming language for writing automated, self-modifying, data-driven programs. You will learn how to:

Use SAS Macro to generalize and iterate program code that executes in CAS.
Access and use a variety of CAS variable scalar and compound data types.
Use CAS variables for powerful, flexible and data-driven programming.

Building Data Visualization Applications Using Python and SAS
Join SAS’ Xavier Bizoux at 11:00 a.m. ET on Tues., Jan. 21 to discover how easy it is to build custom web applications using Python as a programming language and SAS to provide data. You will learn how to:

Use Dash and Django to visualize SAS data and score data from a web browser.
Use the SWAT package to integrate CAS data into your custom web application.

How Can I Geocode Address Data Using SAS® Viya®?
Join SAS’ Greg Treiman at 11:00 a.m. ET on Tues., Jan. 28 to learn how to turn location-based data into actionable insights. You will learn about common pitfalls and ways to avoid them. You will also learn about geocoding using: