SAS has always had a large and experienced community of users and pundits, in fact it has often been referred to as the closest thing to a religion a software company has ever achieved.

 

We hope to further that sense of fellowship and community by offer links to resources that are readily available and by developing and providing access to resoucres that are useful to fellow SAS users and consultants.

We have developed a range of prebuilt portlets that deliver additional capability within the SAS portal.  Portlets are small windows of functionality within a SAS Portal page which allow a portal page to be personalised by the end user.

 

 

SAS Tutorials for Sale

 

There is often a number of ways to do a single task within SAS, and determining which one is the best is the tricky part.  Here we compile a list of articles and resources for each SAS Product that outlines the options (and sometimes even the best practise)

SAS Forums are legendary for providing interesting (and often indepth) presentatons and papers on how people have got the best  out of their SAS investment.  Here we provide links to these papers.

All our extensions are designed and tested to ensure we provide the highest level of quaility to you.  But as can sometimes happen with software development an unplanned feature might slip through, so lets us know and we will fix it.

 

The Support area is only available to saasInct customers so login at our support site http://saasInct.zendesk.com/, create a ticket with the details of any problem and we will get straight back to you.

 

If you need help or support for anything else feel free to register and create a ticket as well, and we can discuss with you the best way to assist you.

 

SAS 9.2 Information

9.2 is here, so here are articles and resources about each of the different SAS 9.2 products, including tips and tricks, how to guides and tutorials.

SAS Client and Contractor Freelance Hub

I n our travels we often bump into talented SAS Contractors who are between gigs and looking for some work. We also often talk to customers who are looking for SAS skilled resources to help them deliver a project.

The trick seems to be getting them together in the right place and at the right time.

So we have created a freelance style website where Clients can post their jobs and Contractors can post their skills, all for FREE!

View the saasInct SAS Freelance website.

Prebuilt SAS Themes for Sale

We have developed a range of prebuilt SAS Themes that deliver different looks and styles for your SAS environment.   Our themes apply a unique look to:

• SAS Portal
• SAS Strategic Performance Management
•  SAS Web Report Studio
• SAS OLAP Viewer

[portlet button) 

 

Data integration server and studio makes building a Data Warehouse so much easier.  And with the tips we have found you can almost build one with your eyes closed.

View a list of SAS Data Integration Tips and Tricks 

Business Intelligence is often seen as an oxymoron, and the term has so many definitions it is almost funny (almost).  Luckily the world of SAS users often present papers explaining what it is and how to do it and here are some of the papers they have written.

View SAS Forum Papers about Business Intelligence (Portal, Web Report Studio, OLAP etc)

The first release of SAS 9.2 was a release of improved Base (Foundation) functionality.  Since then we have had a number of Maintenance release that have improved the SAS Foundation capabilities.

Find out more SAS 9.2 Base/Foundation SAS Information.

Sharing SAS knowledge, amongst the community

There is a lot of combined knowledge amongst the SAS community throughout the world. Here we share the bits of that knowledge we discover.

Discover what SAS Articlea and Papers we have found so far.

Enterprise Guide is often referred to as the Swiss Army Knife of SAS.  Here you can find out all the blades available and how to best use them.

View a list of SAS Enterprise Guide Tips and Tricks

You can code by hand or use Data Integration Studio.  If you agree with us that Data Integration Studio is the way to go here are some papers on how to get the best out of it.

View SAS Forum Papers about Data Integration

The first release of SAS 9.2 was a release of improved Base (Foundation) functionality.  Since then we have had a number of Maintenance release that have improved the SAS Foundation capabilities.

Find out more SAS 9.2 Base/Foundation SAS Information.

Metadata Server is the place to store the definitions of your "single source of the truth" and it is the hub of all SAS servers and tools. So get it right and you can rock, get it wrong and you will rol more than a dingy in a storm.

View a list of SAS Metadata Tips and Tricks 

Enterprise Guide has been referred to as the Swiss Army knife of SAS.  There isn't a lot that you can't do with it and here are some papers on the magic others have achieved using Enterprise Guide.

View SAS Forum Papers about Enterprise Guide

The SAS 9.2 release of improved Base (Foundation) functionality.  Since then we have had a number of Maintenance release that have improved the SAS Foundation capabilities.

Find out more SAS 9.2 Base/Foundation SAS Information.

The  SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform has multiple tiers, services, servers, ports, users .... So we have found multiple things that can help you to get to grip with all of them quicker.

View a list of SAS Platform Administration Tips and Tricks 

Metadata is the central hub to all SAS server products and provides the repository for the central source of truth. Here are some papers on how to get the best out of you metadata repository.

View SAS Forum Papers about Metadata

Portals are the windows to view all things, and the SAS Information Delivery Portal is no different. Checkout the size and shape o all the windows you can build using the SAS portal.

View a list of SAS Portal Tips and Tricks 

It aint quite Oracle, DB2, or Tearadata, but it is one of the quickest ways to get a database up and running. Here are some papers on how to integratie with Microsoft Access.

View SAS Forum Papers about Microsoft Access Integration

Micosoft Excel is the second most popular reporting tool (after SAS ;-) and there are lots of ways to pass SAS results to Excel.

View SAS Forum papers about Microsoft Excel Integration 

If you need to make your servers go faster, or you are dealing with large volumes of data, here are a list of SAS Forum Papers that will give you a few ideas of where to start.

View SAS Forum papers about Performance Tuning

The  SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform has multiple tiers, services, servers, ports, users .... So we have found SAS Forum Papaers that can help you to get to grip with all of them quicker.

View SAS Forum papers about Platform Administration

There is often more than two different ways to do a sinlge task using SAS code.  Here are papers with the outlining the approach chosen and why.

View SAS Forum papers about SAS Programming

An application that searches data and sends an alert when a certain situation occurs.

Providing prebuilt SAS Extensions, that leverage your SAS investment

Returns

Unlike physical goods, electronically distributed software can be duplicated. Once an extension has been downloaded, it is unfortunately not possible for us to ensure the purchased software is not being used. Therefore, !saasInct does not accept product returns.

Warranty

Our warranty policy is simple, if it doesn't work we will fix it, at no cost to you.  Just log a track at our support site and we will get straight back to you.

Need to display sub tabs in your portal page. to free up space?  Our Menu portlet enables you to put sub tabs, one for each page required on a portal page

View more about the Menu / Sub-Tabs Portlet

 

 

An Introduction to SAS® Information Map Studio
Kevin Davidson · FSD Data Services, Inc. & University of Houston

ABSTRACT
SAS Information Map Studio is used to create information maps - metadata that  surfaces your data into terms that business users can understand. Information  architects can visually specify relationships between tables so that business  users can query the data and get reports without having to know much (or any)
programming. SAS Web Report Studio will be used to demonstrate the utility of  information maps.

A couple days before the conference deadline for submitting this paper I found  out about some major upgrades to Information Map Studio, making some of my  content out-of-date. Thus I’m going make this more of an executive summary  style paper rather than a technical one with a plan of demonstrating the latest  release of the software, version 3.1, during the presentation. 

View the Introdution to SAS Information Map Studio paper

 

How much does a portlet cost?

USD $1,000 for unlimited users and no ongoing fees or renewals.

There is a whole lot of information available over on the SAS support site outlining whats new in the Base SAS 9.2 release.

Its  over at What's New in Base SAS 9.2: Overview

It covers:

• Overview
• SAS Procedures
• SAS Statistical Procedures
• SAS Language Features
• SAS Windowing Environment
• Moving and Accessing SAS Files
• Output Delivery System
• Data Security Technologies in SAS
• SAS Macro Language Facility
• SAS Scalable Performance Data Engine
• SAS XML LIBNAME Engine
• Companion for Windows
• Companion for UNIX
• Companion for OpenVMS
• Companion for z/OS

 

 

Individual data items, data groups, arrays, tables etc. that can be assembled to form a whole.

What versions of SAS are supported?

All our portlets are developed and tested using SAS 9.2.x and SAS 9.1.3 (SP4)

Messages sent automatically by a computer system when an AGENT identifies a certain situation. For example, if stock of an item in a warehouse drops to a certain level, key personnel can be immediately informed.

Want to display interactive Flash based graphs in your portal page?  Then have we got the portlet for you!

View more about the Flash Graph Portlet

 

 

What Web Server do your Portlets require?

A set of statements organized to solve a problem in a finite number of steps

The Text Portlet is one of our most popular and flexible portlets we offer

With this portlet you can add freeform text or html to any area of your portal pages.

View more about the Text Portlet

If you add more features to a purchased portlet do we automatically get it?

Yes! When we add new functionality to a portlet, you are automatically entitled to the new version.

The SAS institute publishes monthly business and technology oriented newsletters.  Copies of these newsletters can be found here.

 

SAS Business Report	SAS Technology Report
December 2007	February 2008 December 2007
SAS UK In the Know
April 2008

 

The usage of the computer to produce an analysis for management decision, usually involving trend analysis, drill down analysis, demographic analysis, profiling, etc.

What about returns?

Unlike physical goods, electronically distributed software can be duplicated. Once an extension has been downloaded, it is unfortunately not possible for us to ensure the purchased software is not being used. Therefore, we cannot accept product returns.

The establishment of the framework, scope and standards and procedures for a data warehouse at the enterprise level.

Can you modify a portlet for us?

Yes!

Contact Us and tell us what you want the portlet to do and we will give you an estimate for the work to be done.

Data with the lowest level of granularity. Atomic level data sits in a data warehouse and is time variant (i.e., accurate as of some moment in time now passed).

Will your portlets support SAS 9.3?

SAS 9.3 is due to be released sometime in 2011.

As soon as 9.3 is available we will be testing our Portlets against the 9.3 production version. Our expectation is that we will have all our portlets compliant with SAS 9.3 within 2 weeks of the installation media being available.

A property or characteristic of an application entity. For example, the attributes of an EMPLOYEE entity in a business application may be:

• IDFirstname
• Lastname
• Job_Title
• Email_ID

An attribute usually represents a column in a table in a relational database, or a field in a file.

Recording of any changes made to specific data. Details can include date and time of change, how the change was detected, reason for the change and before-and-after data values.

A dichotomizing search with steps in which the sets of remaining items are partioned into two equal parts.

A specialized form of an index indicating the existence or non-existence of a condition for a group of blocks or records.

The hardware connection that allows data to flow from one component to another.

A data model that represents the inherent structure of data without regard to either individual use or hardware or software implementation

no of unique rows divided by total no of columns

A single point in a CUBE.

A consistent collection of data structures expressing the data needs of the organization. This schema is a comprehensive, base level, and logical description of the environment in which an organization exists, free of physical structure and application system considerations.

The process of reducing the volume of data managed without reducing the logical consistency of the data.

A symbol used to indicate that one occurrence of data has a relationship with another occurrence of data. Connectors are used in conceptual data base design and can be implemented hierarchically, relationally, in an inverted fashion, or by a network.

Tthe condition that occurs when two or more programs (or people) try to access the same data at the same time.

Tthe ability to distribute resources (programs, files and data bases) across the network.

All the databases of the company.This includes legacy systems,old and new transaction systems,general business systems,client/server databases,data warehouses and data marts.

The architectural framework that houses the ODS, data warehouse, data marts, i/t interface, and the operational environment. The cif is held together logically by metadata and physically by a network such as the Internet.

The fundamental structure for information in an OLAP system. A structure that stores multi-dimensional information, having one CELL for each possible combination of dimensions.

Facts, concepts, or instructions that a computer records, stores and processes. Used in conjunction with INFORMATION SYSTEMS, “raw data” is organized in such a way that people can understand the results.

Removing errors and inconsistencies from data being inported to a data warehouse.

a software tool for recording the definition of data, the relationship of one category of data to another, the attributes and keys of groups of data, and so forth.

the approach to development that centers around identifying the commonality of data through a data model and building programs that have a broader scope thn the immediate application.

a process whose resource consumption depends on the data on which it operates.

A department-specific data warehouse.
A) Independent – fed from legacy systems within the department
B) Dependent – fed from the enterprise data warehouse (preferred)

The process of finding hidden patterns and relationships in data. For instance, a consumer goods company may track 200 variables about each consumer. There are scores of possible relationships among the 200 variables. Data mining tools will identify the significant relationships.

Removing errors and inconsistencies from data being imported into a data warehouse.

The modification or alteration of data as it is being moved into the data warehouse.

A data type defines the type of data stored in a specific database column, such as date, numeric or character data. Significant differences in data types exist between different platforms’ databases.

A data warehouse is a subject oriented, integrated, non volatile, time variant collection of data. The data warehouse contains atomic level data and summarized data specifically structured for querying and reporting.

An enterprise-wide implementation that replicates data from the same publication table on different servers/platforms to a single subscription table. This implementation effectively consolidates data from multiple sources.

The logical and physical definition of a database structure.

A stamp added by an application that identifies a task or activity by the date and time it was initiated and/or completed. This can appear as part of a transaction log, message queue content in job logs.

A centralized database that has been partitioned according to a business or end-user defined subject area. Typically ownership is also moved to the owners of the subject area.

A remote data source tfgefwefeefw fwhat users can query/access via a central gateway that provides a logical view of corporate data in terms that users can understand. The gateway parses and distributes queries in real time to remote data sources and returns result sets back to users.

Software that supports exception reporting, stop light reporting, standard repository, data analysis and rule-based analysis. A database created for end-user ad-hoc query processing.

the technique of placing normalized data in a physical location that optimizes the performance of the system.

Data whose values are determined by equations or algorithms.

Dimension is typically a qualifiable and text value, such as a region, product line, and includes date values. It defines the secondary headings or labels that make up the body of the report. Each of the dimensions is repeated within each group. Usually, you use items containing text values (for example, Year or item type) for table dimensions. For example, if you select Item Type to be your table dimension, Item Type is a dimension within each group header. Under the dimension "Item Type," appears the name of each kind of item (for example, CD ROM, or HARD Drive). and corresponds to the . A fact is an quantifiable value, such amount of sales, budget or revenue.

 The ability to move between levels of the hierarchy when viewing data with multiple levels.
A) Drill down – changing a view to a greateer level of detail
B) Drill up – changing a view to a greater level of aggregation.

is a standard format for exchanging business data.

the transformation of data from a recognizable format to a form unrecognizable without the algorithm used for the transformation.