Hi Graphics Programming Community, I’m presenting a live “Ask the Expert” webinar on June 15 th , 11 AM – Noon ET entitled Geocoding and Mapping in SAS®. I’ll cover the great mapping capabilities of SAS and its recent additions, by starting with the basics and expanding from there. Bring your questions. I’ll host a live Q&A session at the end of the webinar.   You will learn how to: Create a simple map. Geocode using SAS procedures. Map those geocoded locations. Put it all together with newer mapping capabilities. Reserve your spot for the webinar.   Want more tips? Be sure to subscribe to the Ask the Expert board to receive follow up Q&A, slides and recordings from this and other SAS Ask the Expert webinars.   Can't join the live event? You can view this and other Ask the Expert sessions on-demand here.  Hope to see you there! Shannon ... View more

  Hello Visual Analytics users and inspiring to be Visual Analytics users! I’m presenting a live “Ask the Expert” webinar on building reports and dashboards in SAS Visual Analytics on the 16th of this month. This session is geared towards people that are either brand new to Visual Analytics or want to learn more about Visual Analytics. I will go over how to get to data, add objects to the report, create new pages, hierarchies, filters, links, etc.   Want more tips? Be sure to subscribe to the Ask the Expert board to receive follow up Q/A, slides and recordings from other SAS Ask the Expert webinars. Just hit SUBSCRIBE here:     Can't join the live event? You can view this and other Ask the Experts sessions on-demand here. Hope to see you there! ... View more

Watch this Ask the Expert session to learn about SAS Studio Flows and Steps on SAS Viya.   Watch the webinar  This webinar will include: Information about SAS Studio on Viya. Introduction to Studio Flows and how to build and use them. Introduction to Studio Steps, how to use them and create your own. The questions from the Q&A segment held at the end of the webinar are listed below and the slides from the webinar are attached.   Q&A What is wrapper code? Wrapper code is code that Enterprise Guide and SAS Studio have, which I call the “least common denominator code.” That's the code that's going to guarantee that it runs. So, for instance, there's some basic setup, options for validvarname, etc. You've probably seen that one before, which the client app needs set using a SAS macro variable and then using some SAS functions and so on. So, wrapper code is any code that is generated as part of a flow and, again, similar when you're running a task in Enterprise Guide because it does that too, that you didn't write, but that the application is writing.   Can we combine CAS tables and WORK tables in the Query node? Yes, that will work BUT, see the following comment:   Comment: It's obvious that you should NOT mix Compute Server and Viya tables... Unless you want big CAS tables being transferred to your Compute Server environment? Once you use a compute server table, it's automatically going to bring things all the way over to the SAS compute, so you're negating the value of using CAS, which is large data in memory. That's actually a very great point here. If you mix the two, you could conceivably be bringing in a very large table over. So, I'm going to say new best practice and agree with this comment to say OK, do your SAS 9 joins, etc. On SAS Compute and then load that table(s) into CAS and then do your exploitation from within CAS.   Can we suppress wrapper code? At what point would using the wrapper code be a primary (absolutely required) activity? You can suppress it somewhat. There are some options in the tools, preferences area. You can show custom code, show generated. Right now, it's already suppressing some of the code, but you can’t suppress if the wrapper code for the flow.   What is SAS Engineer replacing? It is targeted to replace Data Integration Studio, which is one of our components for doing ETL. Historically, people have used Enterprise Guide and PC/”Base SAS” to also perform ETL. We’re going to take some of that flow capability, some of that data cleansing and data quality work that was happening in that interface, and we're going to continually add to Engineer.   In what version of SAS Studio did Flows become available? It was the April 2021 release, 2020.1.3.   How do flows work with version control, like Git? Is a .flw file a text format? I am not an expert in GIT but I do know that the .flw file is a text file, specifically JSON. Conceivably you could use GIT here.   We are BASE SAS users and our organization is moving to SAS Viya, what are good SAS documents to review for installation and integration. I would suggest going to support.sas.com or contacting your Account Executive or Customer Success Manager for information specific to your site.   Can SAS Studio within SAS 9.4 be set-up as a progressive web app? Yes.   Can you share the link to the Custom Steps GitHub repository that was mentioned towards the start of the presentation? I spoke too soon. As it stands today, this is not available to the general public. I believe we are doing further testing.   Will flows for SAS Studio be integrated in Viya 3.x? No, they are only available starting in version 2020.1.3.   So, for DI Studio Jobs, SAS Studio would import a .SPK file? Yes. And to transfer a DI application, you'd need create packages for all jobs? Yes, but there is a command line utility that might make this easier to transfer in bulk.     Recommended Resources SAS Studio page from sas.com SAS Tutorial | Getting Started with SAS Studio on SAS Viya Outlier detection, text analytics APIs, SAS Studio Analyst | SAS Viya Release Highlights 2020.1.4   Want more tips? Be sure to subscribe to the Ask the Expert board to receive follow up Q&A, slides and recordings from other SAS Ask the Expert webinars.  ... View more

      Watch this Ask the Expert session and walk away with a handy list of SAS support resources.     Watch the webinar   In early February I did a session where I talked about the most helpful SAS support resources. These are sure to come to the rescue if you get stuck and need some help. Watch this webinar to learn about: New resources that you may not know about. Older resources that are still super-helpful. A go-to list of these resources you can keep handy. The questions from the Q&A segment held at the end of the webinar are listed below and the slides from the webinar are attached along with a handy one-page list of helpful resources. Leave a comment with your favorite SAS support resource.   What is a good link for finding steps for tasks, such as identifying duplicates and join/merge/lookup? If you are using Base SAS, then look up DATA Step. If you use SQL, then look up PROC SQL and PROC FedSQL. If you search these on sas.com or support.sas.com, you’ll find more info about each of them.   Can we code and/or automate using Python or SQL? If not, where's a list of the coding languages? Yes, you can. I suggest looking on GitHub and developer.sas.com for more information.   How would I search for a particular SAS Global Forum session I previously attended? The easiest way to do that is to visit this page https://www.sas.com/en_us/events/sas-global-forum/attend/about.html#conferences and then click on the proceedings for that particular event. You can do a control F to find the paper if you know part of the title.   How does one access this playlist from the YouTube link you provided? You can search SAS Software on YouTube and then you will see Playlists across the top. You can subscribe to SAS Software and also the SAS Users YouTube channel. Here is a direct link to the SAS Software playlists: https://www.youtube.com/SASnewmedia/playlists and here is a direct link to the SAS Users playlists: https://www.youtube.com/c/sasusers/playlists   Are there plans to upgrade the SQL standard in SAS? PROC SQL does not allow many of the standard SQL statements available in other environments (9.4). I suggest looking up the newer PROC FedSQL. From the documentation: The FEDSQL procedure enables you to submit FedSQL language statements from a Base SAS session. The FEDSQL procedure is supported in both SAS 9.4 and SAS Viya. The FedSQL language is the SAS implementation of the ANSI SQL:1999 core standard.   One of the challenges I have is to learn new procedures and later found out I'm not licensed, what is the most efficient way to resolve it? Please talk with your company’s SAS administrator about your license. I also suggest you search for “SAS Procedures by Product.” You should find a page where you can see if the procedure is part of your licensed products.   Under Solutions in SAS Support Communities, what is the Risk option? Is there a User Group for that? The Risk Community is for users that are using our Risk products. The Users Groups are typically set up by geography, not SAS products, because they usually have in person meetings when we’re not having a global pandemic. The SAS Communities are a great place to connect with people using the same products and ask questions.   Are the Community posts rated so we can easily choose which to use? They are not rated, but you can do a search within any community or across them all to find topics of interest. You can also see how may views each post has.   We are SAS 9.4 M7 users and one of our source systems is being migrated to MS azure. Primarily we have been asked to connect to ADLS(gen2) and Synapse (SQL pool on demand). What are the connector options available in Base SAS? While technically not part of Base SAS, the following SAS/ACCESS Interface to Microsoft SQL Server supports the following: Starting with SAS 9.4M4: Microsoft Azure SQL Database Microsoft Azure SQL Database managed instance Starting with SAS 9.4M7: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics For Azure Data Lake Storage, Gen2, it looks like support was added in Viya 3.5 so more than likely there is now native access. I would have your team contact a SAS Account Executive, SAS Technical Support, or a Customer Success Manager for more information.     Recommended Resources SAS Support Site SAS Support Community SAS Users YouTube Channel SAS Blogs SAS Conference Proceedings (1976 - present)... and more   Want more tips? Be sure to subscribe to the Ask the Expert board to receive follow up Q&A, slides and recordings from other SAS Ask the Expert webinars.   ... View more

  Hi New SAS User Community,   I’m presenting a live “Ask the Expert” webinar on February 9 th , 1 PM – 2 PM ET entitled Go-To List of SAS ® Support Resources. If you get stuck and need some help, our list of the most helpful SAS support resources will come to the rescue. Join me for this live webinar followed by a live Q&A session at the end of my presentation. You will learn about: New resources that you may not know about. Older resources that are still super helpful. A go-to list of these resources you can keep handy. Click here to register for the webinar.   Want more tips? Be sure to subscribe to the Ask the Expert board to receive follow up Q&A, slides and recordings from this and other SAS Ask the Expert webinars.   Can't join the live event? You can view this and other Ask the Expert sessions on-demand here.  ... View more

Watch this Ask the Expert session to get in-depth insight into the SAS Studio 5.2 interface and it’s utilities. You can watch on-demand at your leisure.    Watch the webinar   Watch this webinar to learn: New utilities for importing and querying data. How to navigate the server file system. About new features in SAS Studio 5.2. Here are the questions from the Q&A segment held at the end of the webinar. The slides from the webinar are attached.   Is the 5 family of SAS Studio only for SAS Viya? Yes. 5 sits on top of Viya.   What is the minimum version of SAS needed for SAS Studio 5.2? SAS Viya 3.5.   How do you create a folder shortcut? To create a folder shortcut: Click in the navigation pane to open the Explorer section. Next, click and select Folder shortcut. The New Folder Shortcut window appears. In the Name box, enter the name of the folder shortcut. Click to select a folder. Click OK to create the folder shortcut. The new shortcut is added to the list of folder shortcuts.   Can you open up datasets to view their contents, and if so, is there still a limit on the number of records that it reads in? Yes, you can open dataset (or datasets) and view up to 1000 rows at a time.   Can you apply a WHERE clause similar to Viewtable or data viewing capability in EG, and have it apply to the entire dataset? Yes, you can filter your data in order to display only rows that meet certain criteria, based on values in the data. You can filter data in the table viewer either by creating a quick filter based on a single column or by creating a filter expression with one or more columns. You can create a filter expression to filter your data by one or more columns. Click the funnel icon to use the expression builder in the Filter Table Rows window to create a filter expression.   In the query tool, can you do a sub-select? You can Filter based on values in the Query utility. It does not directly support a sub-query. You could write code to do this.   Is there a process to automatically convert stored processes into jobs? No, there is no utility to do this.   Is File event available? There is nothing specific to file event capability within the application.   Is there a way to jump directly to a specific page in the Table Viewer? No, but you can filter.   Can SAS Studio do program comparison? No, there is no comparison capability directly from SAS Studio.   How do I access network folders? Setting up access to network folders is specific to the environment and as such, would need to be set up by an administrator at your site.   I access SAS Studio from SAS On Demand for Academics (SODA) (as an instructor). When will SAS Studio 5.2 be deployed there? SAS Studio 5.2 is available on SAS Viya 3.5. I believe SODA is only 9.4 and the most current version for 9.4 is 3.81.   Recommended Resources Video: What's New in SAS Studio 5.2 Video: Setting up Git Repository in SAS Studio 5.2 What's New in SAS 9.4 and Viya 3.5; SAS Studio 5.2 SAS Studio User's Guide   Want more tips? Be sure to subscribe to the Ask the Expert board to receive follow up Q&A, slides and recordings from other SAS Ask the Expert webinars.     ... View more

    Watch this Ask the Expert session to get in-depth insight into the SAS Studio 5.2 interface and it’s utilities. You can watch on-demand at your leisure.    Watch the webinar   Watch this webinar to learn: New utilities for importing and querying data. How to navigate the newly supported server file system. About new features in SAS Studio 5.2. Here are the questions from the Q&A segment held at the end of the webinar. The slides from the webinar are attached.   Is the 5 family of SAS Studio only for SAS Viya? Yes. 5 sits on top of Viya.   What is the minimum version of SAS needed for SAS Studio 5.2? SAS Viya 3.5.   How do you create a folder shortcut? To create a folder shortcut: Click in the navigation pane to open the Explorer section. Next, click and select Folder shortcut. The New Folder Shortcut window appears. In the Name box, enter the name of the folder shortcut. Click to select a folder. Click OK to create the folder shortcut. The new shortcut is added to the list of folder shortcuts.   Can you open up datasets to view their contents, and if so, is there still a limit on the number of records that it reads in? Yes, you can open dataset (or datasets) and view up to 1000 rows at a time.   Can you apply a WHERE clause similar to Viewtable or data viewing capability in EG, and have it apply to the entire dataset? Yes, you can filter your data in order to display only rows that meet certain criteria, based on values in the data. You can filter data in the table viewer either by creating a quick filter based on a single column or by creating a filter expression with one or more columns. You can create a filter expression to filter your data by one or more columns. Click the funnel icon to use the expression builder in the Filter Table Rows window to create a filter expression.   In the query tool, can you do a sub-select? You can Filter based on values in the Query utility. It does not directly support a sub-query. You could write code to do this.   Is there a process to automatically convert stored processes into jobs? No, there is no utility to do this.   Is File event available? There is nothing specific to file event capability within the application.   Is there a way to jump directly to a specific page in the Table Viewer? No, but you can filter.   Can SAS Studio do program comparison? No, there is no comparison capability directly from SAS Studio.   How do I access network folders? Setting up access to network folders is specific to the environment and as such, would need to be set up by an administrator at your site.   I access SAS Studio from SAS On Demand for Academics (SODA) (as an instructor). When will SAS Studio 5.2 be deployed there? SAS Studio 5.2 is available on SAS Viya 3.5. I believe SODA is only 9.4 and the most current version for 9.4 is 3.8.1.   Recommended Resources Video: What's New in SAS Studio 5.2 Video: Setting up Git Repository in SAS Studio 5.2 What's New in SAS 9.4 and Viya 3.5; SAS Studio 5.2 SAS Studio User's Guide   Want more tips? Be sure to subscribe to the Ask the Expert board to receive follow up Q&A, slides and recordings from other SAS Ask the Expert webinars.     ... View more

Hi SAS Studio Community, I’m presenting a live “Ask the Expert” webinar on October 29, 11 AM – Noon ET entitled What’s New is SAS ® Studio 5.2? Join me for this webinar and get in-depth insight into the SAS ® Studio 5.2 interface and its utilities. All future SAS ® Studio software on SAS ® Viya ® will be based on this version. At the end of the webinar, I’ll answer your questions during the Q&A session. You will learn about: Utilities for importing and querying data. The ability to navigate the server file system. The Data Studio Debugger. Various other new features. Click here to register for the webinar.   Want more tips? Be sure to subscribe to the Ask the Expert board to receive follow up Q&A, slides and recordings from this and other SAS Ask the Expert webinars.   Can't join the live event? You can view this and other Ask the Expert sessions on-demand here.  ... View more

Did you miss the Ask the Expert session on 10 ways to make your SAS code run more efficiently? Not to worry, you can catch it on-demand at your leisure.    Watch the webinar   Learn how to use your compute and SAS language concepts and processing to make your programs more efficient. In many cases, this translates to running faster. I’ll share 10 easy-to-understand, unique and effective tips for you. During this webinar, you will learn: Methods for running SAS more efficiently. How to control what resources are used. How SAS works and how to better use resources.   Here are the questions from the Q&A segment held at the end of the webinar. The slides from the webinar are attached.   Do we have debugger which shows me variable values step by step when I run SAS code? My SAS EG version is 7.15HF7. Yes you do! In Enterprise Guide with a code tab open, select on the lime green bug on the right-hand side of the context sensitive toolbar just above the code. Then go to the bug just to the left of the code and select it. This will start the debugger which will allow you to step through one line at a time.   How does IF THEN ELSE compare to using CASE WHEN? I don’t know and a quick search did not turn up anything obvious. However, Case, When, Then constructs are supported in SQL so one could assume that PROC SQL CASE statement would attempt to pass the query through to the database. This could mean faster processing times, but I did not find much on this.   Is there a difference between the keep/drop on the set statement or as an individual statement? (I almost always put mine at the bottom.) Yes, there is a difference. When you specify the DROP= or KEEP= option in the SET statement, SAS does not read the excluded variables into the program data vector. If you work with a large data set (perhaps one containing thousands or millions of observations), then you can construct a more efficient DATA step by not reading unneeded variables from the input data set.   If you have more variables to keep and less to drop - then why not use drop = ? I would use drop as well. The only reason to use a keep is to have a record of what is kept – it is part of the code.   Isn’t WHERE more dangerous? It executes on the set data instead of the actual data step. Not sure what you mean by dangerous 😊. My point was that in the data step or procs using the WHERE statement might improve the efficiency of your SAS programs because SAS is not required to read all observations from the input data set.   Do character variables usually have 8 bytes, while numeric variables have 4 bytes? SAS uses floating point representation and, by default, stores numeric values using 8 bytes. My example had 4 characters and that can mean only 4 bytes. The number of characters in a fixed number of bytes depends on what encoding your SAS session is using. If you are using a single byte encoding, like WLATIN1, then each character takes one byte. If you are using double byte characters (common with Japanese or Chinese) then each character needs two bytes. If you are using UTF8 encoding (also called unicode support) then a character can use between 1 and 3 bytes, depending on the character.     What is the difference between "proc dataset" and "data"? Proc datasets is a procedure that is a utility procedure that manages your SAS files. With PROC DATASETS, you can do the following: copy SAS files from one SAS library to another, rename SAS files, repair SAS files, delete SAS files, list the SAS files that are contained in a SAS library, list the attributes of a SAS data set, etc. The DATA statement begins a DATA step and provides names for any output such as SAS data sets, views, or programs.     Thoughts on using the IF THEN DO to perform actions on subsets of obs versus using a more complex IF? I found this neat summary on Stackoverflow: SAS evaluates the expression in an IF-THEN statement to produce a result that is either non-zero, zero, or missing. A non-zero and nonmissing result causes the expression to be true; a result of zero or missing causes the expression to be false. If the conditions that are specified in the IF clause are met, the IF-THEN statement executes a SAS statement for observations that are read from a SAS data set, for records in an external file, or for computed values. An optional ELSE statement gives an alternative action if the THEN clause is not executed. The ELSE statement, if used, must immediately follow the IF-THEN statement. Using IF-THEN statements without the ELSE statement causes SAS to evaluate all IF-THEN statements. Using IF-THEN statements with the ELSE statement causes SAS to execute IF-THEN statements until it encounters the first true statement. Subsequent IF-THEN statements are not evaluated. (Source: support.sas.com) The DO statement is the simplest form of DO group processing. The statements between the DO and END statements are called a DO group. You can nest DO statements within DO groups. A simple DO statement is often used within IF-THEN/ELSE statements to designate a group of statements to be executed depending on whether the IF condition is true or false. Simplified you can say, if then is for one statement, if then do for a block of statements.   Is SELECT best coded with the conditions in the order of the frequency of the data (as an IF is)? I did not find a definitive answer for this. I did find this nugget from this paper by Kirk Paul Lafler on PROC SQL: “When constructing a chain of AND-ed conditions in a WHERE clause, specify the most restrictive values first. By constructing AND-ed conditions in this way, CPU resources will be reduced.”   How do I know when I am using CEDA?  Is there a log message?  Do I have to code something? Yes, there is a log message. You will see something to the effect “Data file XXX.XXX.XXX is in a format...” You do not need to code anything specifically to have this happen, it is automatic.   Came from 15 years of using SQL to now using SAS. I naturally leaned towards using PROC SQL statements a lot. Are using DATA Steps more efficient than PROC SQL? Great question and one that has people with strong opinions on either side. I found a great blog that is a starting point but if you google this, there are lots of papers: https://blogs.sas.com/content/sastraining/2010/12/17/five-reasons-to-use-the-sas-data-step-or-proc-sql/#:~:text=PROC%20SQL%20is%20flexible%20while,before%20you%20attempt%20a%20merge.   When benchmarking the SAS program's performance, is there a way to save the performance results to a new SAS dataset? It can be done using PROC PRINTTO to redirect the log output and some advanced coding techniques to create datasets. This paper is interesting although a bit old.   When you are writing a large dataset to a directory to save it for later - how can one make it faster? Can you use multithread? Multithreaded capability is more for the processing of certain procedures including DS2 and FedSQL which I mentioned in the webinar. I suggest looking at the documentation to see examples of multithreaded output. SAS Datastep and PROC SQL are single threaded. If you have saved a file to a permanent library location, you can possibly index the dataset like I talked about in the webinar. Of course, there are caveats to that as well.   Will there be any talk on Management Console, how to use it efficiently, etc.? Not during today’s session. I suggest the documentation as a good starting point.   Love to see more on PROC Summary, etc. to enhance efficiency? I don’t know of any Ask the Expert sessions on this. A quick google finds a lot of links including a great paper by Art Carpenter. I do know that MEANS at its initial development was all about quickly and easily creating a table of summary statistics sent to a destination such as LISTING whereas SUMMARY was about creating an output dataset. They have merged somewhat in that the underpinnings of both now are the same.   Can you briefly talk about using DOW loop and hash tables to improve the efficiency of the SAS code? I’m sorry but this is not an area I have expertise in. You are correct in assuming that hash tables can increase performance as the tables are loaded into memory.   What is the best way to track changes in SAS? That is a question that can have many answers. One is using GIT. We have added GIT functionality to Base SAS via functions and to the later versions of Enterprise Guide and SAS Studio. Do a quick search on support.sas.com to see what we have implemented.   Is it ok to share the demo programs? Are you asking about my programs that I showed? If so, they will be part of the PDF.   Is there a performance difference between data step vs proc sql? is there specific cases where one performs better than another? Please see my answer above re PROC SQL.   When leveraging index function, can it be used while creating a large data set or should it be used on a large data set after it's been created? Both the PROC SQL and PROC DATASETS options require the dataset already be created. You can, however, create a dataset and index at the same time using the DATA step. I ran a couple of tests and it does not seem to add a whole lot of time to the datastep to create the index at dataset creation. It does save the step of running either PROC SQL or DATASETS after the fact.   Does it help using PROC DATASETS to delete large files no longer being used? PROC DATASETS can delete any size file and will automatically delete any indexes you may have created at the same time. You can also delete different versions of the dataset at the same time with this procedure as well. The documentation is very comprehensive in describing options.   How do we access SAS Analytics Explorers? You can access SAS Analytics Explorers with this link.     Recommended Resources Top Ten SAS® Performance Tuning Techniques 2012 Global Forum Paper Top 10 SAS programming efficiencies Leave Your Bad Code Behind: 50 Ways to Make Your SAS Code Execute More Efficiently   Want more tips? Be sure to subscribe to the Ask the Expert board to receive follow up Q&A, slides and recordings from other SAS Ask the Expert webinars.   ... View more

Hi SAS Programming Community,   I’m presenting a live “Ask the Expert” webinar on September 22, 11 AM – Noon ET on 10 Ways to Make Your SAS ® Code Run More Efficiently. I will cover how to use your compute and SAS language concepts and processing to make your programs more efficient. In many cases, this translates to running faster. I’ll share 10 easy-to-understand, unique and effective tips for you. At the end of the webinar, I’ll answer your questions during the Q&A session. You will learn: Methods for running SAS more efficiently. How to control what resources are used. How SAS works and how to better use resources.   Click here to register for the webinar.   Want more tips? Be sure to subscribe to the Ask the Expert board to receive follow up Q&A, slides and recordings from this and other SAS Ask the Expert webinars.   Can't join the live event? You can view this and other Ask the Expert sessions on-demand here.  ... View more

Did you miss the Ask the Expert session on SAS Visual Analytics: An Introduction to Custom Calculations and Aggregations?  Not to worry, you can catch it on demand at your leisure. I’ve attached the slides as well.   Watch the webinar   Learn how SAS Visual Analytics enables you to calculate new data items from your existing data items using an expression builder.   In addition to learning how to perform mathematical calculations on numeric values, we’ll explore how you can use calculated data items to create date and time values.     Here are some highlighted questions from the Q&A segment held at the end of the session for ease of reference.   ­Version I have is VA 7.3. Will all the examples show here apply to 7.3? ­ ­Yes.  You can also view the What's New in Visual Analytics 7.4 webinar to see the changes with custom calculations and aggregations.­   ­Can the bar chart be sorted by BMI values and not by names? ­ Yes, select and right-click the measure axis and choose sort, ascending or descending.   ­Will the slides and recording be sent out? ­ They will be posted in the Visual Analytics community.   ­Can you please tell me the link to VA community?   See here for more information.­   ­Where can I find the recorded video training?   Look here for more information.   I would like to see more to do with more detail displayed on graphs   The Getting Started with Visual Analytics Ask the Expert session and some of videos are a good place to start.   I would like to see more sessions on VA Advanced Topics.   There are three other (more coming!) Ask the Expert sessions that I suggest.  Look here for additional resources.    Want more tips? Be sure to subscribe to the Ask the Expert board to receive follow up Q/A, slides and recordings from other SAS Ask the Expert webinars. To subscribe, select Subscribe from the Options drop down button above the articles. ... View more

  Did you miss the Ask the Expert session on SAS Studio: An Introduction?  Not to worry, you can catch it on demand at your leisure. I’ve attached the slides as well.   Watch the webinar   This session introduces SAS Studio, a development application for SAS that you access through your web browser. During this presentation, you’ll learn how it can help you: Interact with SAS from anywhere with a web browser. Have easy access to all your SAS programs. Connect to a SAS server when you run a program or task. Here are some highlighted questions from the Q&A segment held at the end of the session for ease of reference.   If my SAS job is running in SAS Studio on Linux server, but I lose my network connection, does my SAS job will fail or still run on the server?­   This is a similar situation.  It would require you to resubmit the code unless you submitted the code via the Background Submit.   Do you recommend using SAS Studio for a long running SAS job?­   ­You may want to consider utilizing the Background Submit feature.  It submits the code and frees up the interface so you can continue working.  You can even log off and log back in later and check the status of your job. See here for more information.    ­Can SAS Studio completely replace all the functions in SAS Enterprise Guide? If not all functions, what SAS Enterprise Guide functions are missing?­   SAS Studio cannot completely replace all of the functions in Enterprise Guide.  Studio is another interface and not necessarily to be thought of as a replacement.  Here and here are two articles to look through.   ­Is it possible to sort the column names alphabetically, or is the order always consistent with that in the dataset?­ ­   Columns can be dragged to different locations in the data grid.  Values within the columns can be sorted by right clicking on the column heading.­   ­When viewing a dataset, can you reorder the variables?  If yes, will SAS Studio allow you to save a copy of the dataset with the reordered variable list?­ ­   Yes, you can drag the column header to a different location.  The viewer allows for viewing of the data but does not allow editing, so you can’t save it.­  You could copy the generated SQL code and reorder the columns in the code, change to a new table name and run that code to create a new dataset.   ­Can you schedule SAS Jobs/programs with SAS Studio?­ ­   SAS Studio jobs can be run in the background but the interface currently does not support scheduling.  You could save the SAS programs on the server and use another scheduler like LSF. See here for more information.    ­I am just a beginner and I can hardly understand. Do you have any additional resources for me? ­   There will be a recording of this posted to the SAS Community as part of follow up.  You will be able to listen to the recording.  ­You may also want to view the user's guide found here.   ­ I would like to know the pros and cons of using the PC-based Studio vs. the Enterprise version.­    ­ There are no real functional differences of the GUI itself – the decision is more about the architecture. These decisions are usually made at an organizational level.  The implementations are outlined here.   How do I share my folder with my coworker? ­ ­   This can be handled by creating a network location for the drive/folder or a shared drive.­  You cannot share MyFolder as that is assigned to your ID only.  You could share Snippets as well via a repository.   ­We are running SAS Studio in Grid Environment, SAS 9.4 M3. A user was trying to load a 116MB file into SAS Studio using the import wizard and got the error message: “An error occurred while files were being uploaded. Possible cause: The size of the ­­of the uploaded file might be too large. The combined size cannot be greater than 209.72MB”.  We set the size in the SAS Studio config file to 210.  So, the file is smaller than the size.  What is causing this?   Did you restart your web server after you changed the config file?  I would contact SAS Technical Support.   Does SAS Studio Basic fully support all the SAS components that an online or batch SAS session supports (specifically SAS/Share and SAS/Connect)? We use MP Connect to run simultaneous local SAS sessions and use SAS/Share to share SAS tables.­   Please contact SAS Technical Support with this question as the answer will have site specific components.   ­Will SAS Studio support running a SAS program in normal batch mode?­ ­   SAS Studio supports background processing. See here for more information.     ­If I need to use data from (Oracle/Teradata) database, do I need to setup my PC specifically? Or SAS Studio will have same set up for all users and will automatically connected to database/server as needed?­   You would not need to set up your PC (assuming we are talking about server-based SAS Studio) but would need to set up the connection to the remote database on/via the server.  If you have this set up already for Enterprise Guide via metadata, you should be able to use that library.   ­What set of system options are used when SAS Studio Basic executes SAS code, online, batch or other?­   ­If you are asking about the SAS options that are used, you can open a code window and submit a PROC OPTIONS to see SAS options and how they are defined.­   ­Can an equivalent of -set options and/or -sysparm be specified when executing SAS code with SAS Studio Basic/Enterprise?­   Please refer to the Administrators Guide here.   ­Can a drop-down be set up for available SAS macros? Can there be prompts for the different arguments?­   Currently SAS Studio does not support these features.   ­Will SAS Studio Basic be able to execute a Linux shell script that executes a SAS program?­   Only if your administrator has enabled XCOMMAND.  Basic is the local PC implementation so I would assume the server-based options for Studio.   ­Is there a way to view a log generated by a SAS program that was run in batch outside of SAS Studio?­   Yes.  If the log (assuming a text file) is in a location that Studio can ‘see’ it, e.g. My SAS Files, then you can open the file in SAS Studio.­   ­Results tab clears every time we run the code. In PC-SAS this did not occur and we had the option to Clear All. Is there a setting where we can stop the Results tab from clearing out the buffer?­   That functionality is not currently available.  It is being reviewed for a future release.   ­Is there some documentation that provides some more detail of the internals of how SAS code is executed?­   The SAS code is executed essentially the same as via Enterprise Guide and PC SAS for that matter.  There are different system and SAS options used as well as possibly different SAS system macros being called but the code is executing in the same manner.  I would refer to the SAS Studio Administrator’s Guide.   ­ Will process getting slower when multiple users simultaneously use the SAS Studio?­   Possibly.  This really depends on the backend server(s) and the network traffic -  but this is the case with any software.  SAS Studio can be configured to run against a grid of servers and/or very large, well configured servers.   Which certificate or program should I learn first if I am a beginner? ­   There is an online SAS Programming I class that is a recommended beginning point and consider the first SAS Programming Certification.  You may also want to look at the Enterprise Guide courses.   ­Are snippets and tasks available in the basic version of Studio or just the Enterprise version?­ ­   They are available in all versions.   ­Can we use SAS Studio on Chrome or Safari in IOS? ­   Yes. ­Shannon has included a link in the PPT slides of which browser is supported.   ­You mentioned that you can see the code that creates an output. Is that only if you created that table, or can you see the code if someone else created it as well? ­   The code generated in View Table is for purposes of viewing the data.  It does not allow for editing the table.­  You can see the code for any item you generated.  You cannot see other user’s code unless they save it to a location you have access to.   ­Batch Submit one or multiple SAS programs?­ ­   SAS Studio supports background processing, one at a time or multiple up to three. See here for more information.    ­How do we submit a job to run in the background, please?­   See more information about background processing here.   ­Can we batch submit programs in SAS Studio?­   ­SAS Studio supports background processing. See more information here.    Can you briefly talk about interactive mode and why it would be used?   Some SAS procedures are interactive, which means they remain active until you submit a QUIT statement, or until you submit a new PROC or DATA step. In SAS Studio, you can use the code editor to run these procedures, as well as other SAS procedures, in interactive mode. By using interactive mode, you can run selected lines of code from your SAS program and use the results to determine your next steps. For example, the OPTMODEL procedure in SAS/OR enables you to model and solve mathematical programming models. By running this procedure interactively, you can quickly check results for parts of the program and determine whether you need to make any modifications without running the entire program.  I would suggest only using interactive mode for these procedures.  You are introducing more overhead by starting multiple workspace sessions.   ­How many version history does it store and also can you transfer them to SVN process?­   I am assuming you are talking about Apache Subversion.  It will store quite a few (I did ten as a test) but I do not think you can drop these into Subversion.  Please contact SAS Technical support and they should be able to give you a definitive answer.   ­Can we use keyboard shortcuts, e.g. F8 to submit a program?­ ­   Yes, keyboard shortcuts can be used although they do not map one-to-one from PC SAS.   ­Can I access external files (Excel or CSV or Text) stored on my windows PC (if I am connected to Unix server)­?   Yes, but you need to set up the server to be able to ‘see’ the PC drives.  Shared drives, samba, etc. could be part of this strategy.   ­How is the SAS Studio running/executing speed comparing to PC SAS?­   It is similar, especially for longer running jobs.  It may be slower for smaller tasks as there is a webserver (and other things) involved.   ­How many versions of the program is retained and can you do a difference?   I do not think there is a hardcoded limit.  However, please remember that these versions are not saved between SAS Studio sessions.   ­From a company standpoint, how is SAS positioning Studio compared to EG?­   Short answer is that Guide has more functionality and is the most widely used of all of our interfaces.  Studio is another option for our users.  It does have the added benefit of being browser-based and is currently the programming interface for SAS Viya.   ­Do SAS 9.4 TS Level 1M2 have SAS Studio?   Yes, it should/could be available to your site.  It may have not have been installed or configured. You would need to speak with your SAS administrators.   ­Does Studio have power and sample size?   Yes, if you have 3.6 you should see the PSS tasks.   Can you send the output to Excel file from dataset?­   Yes, you could use a Snippet to create a .CSV file as an example.   Where can I find the installation guide for SAS Studio?­   See here for more information.    ­How many SAS Studio sessions can be run concurrently?  Is it better to have them in separate tabs or separate browser windows?­ ­   Session scalability is largely determined by your server size, capacity and utilization. The batch/background submit in SAS Studio v3.6 can help your productivity for longer-running jobs­.   ­As new tasks and code snippets are added in your releases, are they immediately available on our interface, or does our IT team have to push some button to push them out?­ ­   You IT/admin team only has to apply hotfixes and maintenance to the server (s) in order for all your SAS interfaces to be updated and gain new features­.   What resources would you recommend for installing/setup for SAS Studio for Enterprise BI Server?­ ­   Configuring the mid-tier is key­.  Look here­ and ­at the version 3.6 admin guide.    I have PC SAS. How do I access it through my browser with SAS Studio instead of kicking off PC SAS and using Display Manager?­   You need to make sure it has been installed and configured.  You need to have a recent (M2 and later) installation of SAS 9.4.  If the above has happened, you should see an entry for SAS Studio on the Start menu.  If not, please contact your system administrator and/or SAS Technical Support.   ­I am wondering if there is any help documents about using my own excel data in SAS Windowing Interface?­ ­   I encourage you to search communities.sas.com ­or the documentation section on support.sas.com.   ­Can the output data be shown for all rows and scroll down to see instead of limited number of rows on each page and have to go to the next x rows on the next page?­   Currently you can only page through 100 observations at a time.   How to access PC files such that Excelsheet located in local PC or desktop if server is linux­? ­   First, you'll need permissions and connectivity between your Linux server and local PC, then you could use the upload feature in SAS Studio­.   When selecting the fields for inclusion in the code, in addition to clicking and dragging, can you also double click the field to put it in the code?­   Double-clicking on the column will bring up it’s properties window, not simply add it to the selection.   ­Can you run multiple studio sessions at a time?­   Yes­, but remember that each Studio session uses it’s own workspace server, meaning they are independent of each other.   ­What are the privileges to give to a user to be able to effective work using SAS Studio and see Libraries?   At a minimum, read data and read metadata­.  These may already be set up if you use Enterprise Guide in a client/server configuration.   ­Are there any plans to include the "workflow" concept of Enterprise Guide into SAS Studio?­ ­   It's in SAS Studio version 3.6­, the Visual Programmer perspective.  Please see the SAS Studio: Advanced Feature and What’s New Ask the Expert session.   ­Do I have to install SAS Studio first and then create an account to login into, to begin a SAS Studio session­?   Not necessarily.  The connection profile could be the same one you use for Enterprise Guide for instance.  I would create the user before installing SAS/SAS Studio.  Please see the administrator’s guide that goes with your back-end SAS (9.2, 9.3 or 9.4)   Does SAS studio allows for exporting result to excel?­   Yes, there is a Snippet that can be used.   ­What's the difference between studio and EG­?   Please see here. ­   ­Regarding Power Point, can I send different outputs to the same Power Point document?­   Yes, different objects will go onto new slides.   How do you copy the generated SQL code?   You can highlight and copy via CTRL-C and paste via CTRL-V, same as all other Windows applications   I was referring to the generated SQL in the table viewer.   There is a button next to the left of the Print icon that will display the SQL code.   Can you develop standard mysnippets that I can be shared with other users in my department?   Yes - we suggest creating and organizing a snippets repository for that exact purpose.   Can you use SAS Studio with 9.2 version?   No, it's supported at version 9.4 M2 and later.   What about exporting to excel?   Yes, this can be done. Check in Snippets, Data, Generate CSV File   Can you please show us how to create or run existing stored process?   Sorry, it's unlikely that we'll cover this today. Since stored processes are essentially macros, they can be created and run in SAS Studio like other SAS macro code. Enterprise Guide provides a wizard to create stored processes that's a great way to get started - simply right mouse click on the item you'd like to turn into a stored process. I suggest Enterprise Guide for Stored Process creation/running.   Can you make find/replace across multiple programs at once?   No, currently only the program that is open and active.   We may get to this but are you able to move projects and/or code back and forth between Studio and EG? Is there anything that works in one but not the other?   Yes, you can import Enterprise Guide projects into SAS Studio (but not the other way). The main difference is that SAS Studio's process flow nodes do not always illustrate the same level of granularity as EG's process flow nodes contain. Many times the process flow nodes are translated into SAS code nodes.   Does it go the other way too, SAS Studio to EG? Also, if the original EG Project is updated does it need to be re-imported to SAS Studio?   Sorry, SAS Studio process flows currently cannot be consumed by EG...we are examining ways to support this. Yes, if the EG project is updated, it does need to be re-imported to SAS Studio. We're also considering ways to provide greater synchronization between EG & SAS Studio.   When you change the code in a snippet and save the new code, do you overwrite the original snippet or do you create a new SAS program ?   Yes, potentially you can overwrite and replace/update the original, depending on your permissions   Okay. But you could simply copy the code from Studio and paste in EG Program, right?   Yes   Is there a was to direct connect to SAS Visual Analytics LASR server from SAS Studio. In other words be able to send an output table to SAS VA server from Studio....?   Yes, inputs to and outputs from SAS Studio can be read & written anywhere that SAS Visual Analytics can read them   Is there any performance difference between EG/Studio?   Our customers report that they're both affected by several factors, such as by your network speed, server sizing, number of concurrent SAS sessions, volume & nature of analytics tasks being executed, etc. we have hardware experts on staff that conduct server sizings to ensure your environment is right-sized for SAS Studio and EG . Can code modules be analyzed for running in Parallel in Studion like they can in SAS EG?   Yes, via SCAPROC but there is no GUI yet.   I assume SAS knows which Tasks to show based on which products are installed?   SAS Studio will show all tasks available and give you an error message should the server not have the required product installed.   Is there a way to see the file owner in the properties?   Use the List Table Attributes task or you can use PROC DATASETS in code.   Automatically opening output slows SAS performance?   Potentially - one key thing to keep in mind is how much data can reasonably fit into a browser?   Can you provide a list of preferences that can slow SAS performance?   Our customers report that SAS Studio is affected by several factors, such as by your network speed, server sizing, number of concurrent SAS sessions, number of background submits concurrently executing, volume & nature of analytics tasks being executed, etc. we have hardware experts on staff that conduct server sizings to ensure your environment is right-sized for SAS Studio and EG.   Excel is a Results option in EG. Is it available as Results option in Studio?   Not directly. You could use code or a code snippet to generate an excel file.   What is the version of SAS Studio Shannon is using?   3.71 Can you show how to create a new variable using Tasks in the SAS Studio?   The Query node that is part of SAS Studio does not have the ability to create a new variable nor is there a task to do this in Studio. You can always write code to do this.   SAS Studio has a Viya version - SAS Studio 5.1.   Yes and there will soon be an update to 3.8   Will there be another Studio session ?   Yes, please search SAS Studio here to find more webinars https://www.sas.com/en_us/learn/ask-the-expert-webinars.html     Recommended Resources Course: Exploring SAS Studio for SAS Programmers Book: An Introduction to SAS® University Edition   Want more tips? Be sure to subscribe to the Ask the Expert Community Library to receive follow up Q/A, slides and recordings from other SAS Ask the Expert webinars. From the Ask the Expert Library, just click Subscribe from the orange bar underneath the list of the recent articles.   NOTE: For best results when opening the attached slides, click on the “download” icon. ... View more

  Did you miss the Ask the Expert session on SAS Studio: Advanced Topics and What's New? Not to worry, you can catch it on demand at your leisure.  Seems like it might be time to do another live session! check back soon for dates.   Watch the webinar     With SAS Studio, writing and running SAS code has never been easier. This web browser interface lets you access your data and create SAS programs wherever and whenever you need them. No installation required.   Showcasing the latest version of SAS Studio, this live webinar will explore: The batch submission process. Import data and query utilities. A variety of new tasks. We’ll also focus on the software’s Visual Programmer perspective, designed for users who want to work with process flows in a project-based environment.   Q&A Session for SAS Studio: Advanced Topics and What's New   ­What are the global settings that SAS Admins get modify? I am sure that there are defaults. Any feedback on the defaults /recommended changes?­   There a quite a few. Please refer to this link.   ­Can you batch-submit multiple files?­ ­   Yes­, the default is three per session of Studio for the Enterprise Edition and five for the single user, PC version.  The maximum is eight.   ­How can I make data step/procedure wrap in 1 line with '+' sign (similar to SAS PC). Can you describe steps?    This is not possible in SAS Studio.   ­Can you run a select segment of the code or do we need to run the entire program each time? ­ ­   Yes you can highlight and run only a segment of your code when you select the running man.­   ­What is the difference between interactive and non-interactive button? ­ Interactive allows you to run procs that have interactive modes like PROC IML, IMSTAT procs and some of the new VIYA products. Non-interactive runs and is done. Interactive you can continue to submit statements under that proc.­   ­Batch submit - it will run on the server even when I quit the browser, right?­   Yes, and you can log back on to see the progress and get the results.­   ­Can a program be scheduled to run on a specific date & time?­ ­   Not currently. You can export the code and schedule in an external scheduler.­   ­Where does the log go? ­   Goes where the program is located­/run from.   ­Can you specify a location for log and output?­ ­   Yes.  You have to have Studio 3.6 and you can set it in the Preferences.   ­Did you import the excel sheet from your local PC to server or it on the server?­   The import was from a server-based (Windows) directory.   ­Can you set up a batch file to run multiple programs?­ ­   Yes, you can use %include in a .sas file and then submit run in background­.   ­Is there a version control feature in SAS Studio?­   Not true version control - more Submission History.  You can see different versions of programs and you can revert back to past versions as well as there are additional options.­   ­For batch-submit multiple field, will you get separate logs for each program?­ ­   Yes, one for each program submission.­   ­Can you use input prompts like in EG?­   Not currently although it is on the development roadmap.  We have created some custom tasks that you can use from a repository on Github here.   Can I use Enterprise Guide Process flows in SAS Studio?   Not currently, but that is being looked at by development. You can take the code from a process flow and with some editing, run that in SAS Studio.   What version are you showing today? I don’t have some of the same options as you do.   3.6   Can I update my SAS studio without updating other parts of my SAS install?   A qualified yes.  You need to be at a certain maintenance  level of 9.4.  I will post the link to the SAS Note to the SAS Studio Community site.   I don’t have access to SAS Studio at work. Is there a way I can work with SAS Studio even though I am not a student?   Yes, as long as you don’t use it for commercial purposes, you can download and use University Edition.   ­You can't see rapid predictive modeler if you don't have EM licensed though -- right?­ ­   Right­.  Also, if you have an earlier version, you may not see it as a Task.   ­I make a %window in my SAS code so the user can select which programs to run. However I find that  %display fails  in SAS Studio and the user never gets  the %window screen to select from.­ ­   Yes, anything that attempts to open a new window will fail as SAS is running on the server, not a local PC.   ­Also, the X command fails.­   X command is by default not allowed.  You can change this as an administrator.  Please refer to the SAS Studio Administrator’s Guide.   ­Can I put Options XCMD in a background job?­ ­ Not by default will this work.  Please see the above answer.  Also, SAS Studio does not provide anything comparable to the command line in SAS Display Manager. However, you can change some environment options by using the Preferences.  More details can be found here.    ­If the github is not allowed by our security, can we copy to an internal github?­   Yes, you could copy it to a url/repository that is not blocked.   How do I turn the 'Output' on or off? is there a toggle/option?­   Yes, Application Options, Preferences, Results and deselect Automatically open generated output data.     Recommended Resources Course: Essential Data Analysis Using SAS Studio Tasks: A Point-and-Click Approach Book: An Introduction to SAS® University Edition A great resource: https://support.sas.com/software/products/sasstudio/faq/index.html­   Want more tips? Be sure to subscribe to the Ask the Expert Community Library to receive follow up Q/A, slides and recordings from other SAS Ask the Expert webinars. From the Ask the Expert Library, just click Subscribe from the orange bar underneath the list of the recent articles.   NOTE: For best results when opening the attached slides, click on the “download” icon. ... View more

I will be hosting this webinar on the 5th - tomorrow! SAS ® Enterprise Guide ® : Hidden Gems Register now This session looks at existing functionality of SAS Enterprise Guide, as well as some new, must-have features.    Whether you’re a novice user or longtime programmer, you’ll learn something new about: Filtering and viewing options Task and code templates Prompts Computed columns Ordered List Adding SAS code to a process flow. ...more   ... View more

Please join me on the 20th for this live weinar:   SAS ® Visual Analytics: An Introduction to Custom Calculations and Aggregations Join this webinar to learn how SAS Visual Analytics enables you to calculate new data items from your existing data items using an expression builder. Register now View as a web page   ... View more