SAS Community Planet

Open Mic: A Traditionalist's Take on the Kindle

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:59:43 +0000

Contributed by George McDaniel, Acquisitions Editor, SAS Press

Okay, so I bought a Kindle.

Now, officially, I don’t like such electronic gizmos. My oft-stated position has long been that the traditional hard-copy book is good enough for me. For one thing, the batteries don’t go dead.

Be that as it may, when Amazon lowered the price a couple of months ago, I bought a Kindle 2. I was out of shelf space for new hard-copy books and I thought, what the heck. It’s turned out to be pretty neat, though I wasn’t aware that the original $189.00 price tag wasn’t the whole story. A few days after I got it, I had grown fond enough of it to break down and buy the extended warranty, which was another $60. Then I bought a fancy case, to the tune of $40 or so, plus tax. So, it’s a good thing I really like the little dingus because by now I’ve got close to $300 tied up in it, not counting the ebooks I’ve purchased.

The ebook total doesn’t amount to much yet, however, as I’m a little leery of spending real money for things that lack an actual corporeal existence (any software products of my employer excepted, of course). My first download was something called Free Kindle Books and How to Find Them, which, ironically, cost me $1.99. It was pretty well worth it, though, because I found out there are LOTS of free books available, so many you could read from now on and never spend another penny on ebooks. In all there are probably hundreds of thousands of ebooks out there that can be either read natively on the Kindle or through a little processing made to be readable. Ebooks in pdf format can be read straightaway, usually, and for other formats Amazon has a funky system whereby you can email a document and for $.15, Amazon will format and download the result to your Kindle. Or to any of the Kindle apps you happen to have.

Speaking of Kindle apps, they are a pretty neat adjunct to the device itself. Amazon makes available free apps for every conceivable ebook reader (all sorts of smartphones, PCs, Macs, the iPad, etc), so that you can be a Kindle ebook customer without having a Kindle device. I have a Kindle app for my Droid Incredible and also for three of my PCs. The cool thing about it is, when I’m ready to stop reading a given ebook on one device, I can sync it on the Amazon site, then re-sync later from another device and pick up reading where I left off. As one who has spent far too much of his reading life trying to find that place I forgot to bookmark, this is a great feature.

I also like having 3G and so far I haven’t traveled very far out of its range. Last month at the beach I finished a hard-copy book in a series of thrillers I’ve been reading. Rather than having to look for the next book in the series in a book store, I was able to download it within a few seconds. And, yes, the e-ink screen reads fine in the bright sunshine.

All in all, I’m happy with my Kindle. I don’t have to turn pages, the battery life is not eternal but is still pretty darn good, and I’m saving on the shelf space I ran out of a long time ago anyway. Of course, as I am gloatingly informed by Kirsten, in the office next door to mine, whom you all know and who happens to be the proud owner of a new Kindle 3, my Kindle 2 is now obsolete. But that’s okay. I’ve never been comfortable on the leading edge anyway.

The SAS Training Post: New Business Intelligence Certification Launched

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:47:00 +0000

Last month, the SAS Global Certification program added a new credential, the SAS Certified BI Content Developer. My first blog post from May described how a global team of BI experts collaborated to create the beta exam. In May and June, candidates from a broad background of experience (novice to expert) challenged this beta exam. We used SAS software to perform a psychometric analysis of the results to select the questions that differentiated qualified candidates from those that did not have the required level of proficiency. This exam was published in early August and is now available through our testing vendor Prometric and at SAS regional offices globally.

If you intend to pursue this credential, please note that the exam is quite challenging. The recommended training, Creating Business Intelligence for Your Organization: Fast Track is important for your success, especially if you have less than one year of experience as a Content Developer working with the platform for SAS Business Analytics. Also, if you have taken the training, we recommend at least 3 months experience prior to your exam attempt. It has extensive coverage of topics such as advanced reporting techniques, stored processes, the environment metadata and how the metadata affect report creation and viewing. The full exam objectives are listed on the Exam Content web page.

Anyone out there ready to validate your Business Intelligence skills? Good luck with your preparations!

Sacramento Valley SAS Users Group: SVSUG Summer Reading Program

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:01:47 +0000

With Labor Day approaching, we now present the final entry in this year's SVSUG Summer Reading Program.Output Delivery System: The Basics and Beyondby Lauren E. Haworth, Cynthia L. Zender, and Michele M. BurlewThis new book is an updated and expanded version of Haworth's highly-respected book, Output Delivery System: The Basics, which was published back in 2001. The original book was 302 pages

NOTE: The blog of RTSL.eu: NOTE: Reflections on Enterprise Guide (EG)

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:27:34 +0000

I've recently had the benefit of spending some "quality time" with Enterprise Guide V4.2 (and SAS V9.2). I've enjoyed migrating a selected sample of my client's SAS/Base programs into EG projects. The foibles of my client's code gave me a great opportunity to re-evaluate EG's visual-coding, and to inform my client of the benefits and challenges of adopting visual-coding wholesale.

Visual-coding is the term I use to describe the creation of programs by the visual connection of process nodes with data nodes using a drag-and-drop graphical user interface. A visually-coded program usually results in a flow chart-like diagram of the program's activity.

The first point I should make is that EG does not force you to adopt visual-coding. You can use EG's program node with its code editor and ignore visual-coding altogether. Compared with SAS's classic display manager interface, you'll lose the ability to use the interactive DATA step debugger and to view the content of SAS catalogs, you'll gain an integrated FTP client, seamless remote submission of your code, and you can use visual-coding for wizard-like code generation for thoser PROCs you're less familiar with.

My two primary observations about EG are:

1) It's not a visual ETL tool. If you want to generate ETL in a visual manner, get DI Studio. EG's in-built task nodes do not provide any means of updating your data. Your only output options are a) create a new data set, or b) completely over-write an existing data set. In some cases option (b) is not available within a single task (most notably in the APPEND task). In many cases EG's options will be sufficient, but the absence of SQL's INSERT and UPDATE statements, and DATA step's MODIFY and UPDATE statements, means that it may not be the best tool for developing visual ETL.

2) You need to become competent with SQL if you want to use EG's visual-coding in an effective manner. Most of EG's data manipulation tasks are based upon SQL. Particularly the Query Builder task. If you want to go beyond the basics you need to understand how to use SQL syntax such as DISTINCT, GROUP and CASE. And you need to understand what each of the different types of joins do. If you're an experienced SAS programmer you won't struggle to get to terms with the new syntax, but you do need to know it.

I'll offer some more specific findings in the next few posts. In the meantime, if you have any observations of your own, please provide a comment to this post and start a conversation. You can also make use of the EG discussion forum on the SAS Support web site; and learn lots from Chris Hemedinger's blog.

NOTE: The blog of RTSL.eu: NOTE: Reflecting on EG, Here's 4.3

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:24:45 +0000

I knew that EG V4.3 was due soon, but I thought I'd have time to post some EG V4.2 observations before V4.3 saw the light of day. Wrong!

Chris Hemedinger highlighted yesterday that EG V4.3 is available to those who want it.

It has much to recommend it. Most notable to me was the emphasis on new features for users of the SAS program editor. It is heartening to see that SAS recognises that visual-coding does not (yet) satisfy the needs of all SAS programmers. Thanks SAS!

See the What's New section of the SAS V9.2 documentation for the low-down on the new features.

NOTE: The blog of RTSL.eu: NOTE: SAS Global Forum Call for Papers

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:18:33 +0000

I just noticed that the Call for Papers for SAS Global Forum 2011 has opened. Details are available from the SGF Blog.

Submitting a paper (or poster) and presenting it at SAS Global Forum is a great way to share your knowledge of SAS. You have until October 25th to get your submission completed.

The SAS Dummy: Live long and prosper using PROC REG

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:57:42 +0000

The secret to long life is good genes, right?

This publication titled "Joint influence of small-effect genetic variants on human longevity" showed up on my Google alerts, and from what I can read (all of it) and understand (very little of it), that assertion is true.

The researchers used PROC REG for their analysis, a procedure that boasts good genes and long life itself. If you are familiar with PROC REG as the granddaddy of regression procedures in SAS, you should get to know its progeny: ORTHOREG, TRANSREG, PLS (partial least squares), ROBUSTREG, QUANTREG, and more.

JMP Blog: Article on Split-Plot Designs Is Honored Again

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:07:01 +0000

It's the article that keeps winning awards.

Published in October 2009 in the Journal of Quality Technology, "Split-Plot Designs: What, Why, and How" by Bradley Jones and Christopher J. Nachtsheim won the Brumbaugh Award from ASQ this year.

Jones, a Research Fellow at JMP, and Nachtsheim, a professor in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, picked up the Brumbaugh Award in May at the annual ASQ World Conference on Quality and Improvement.

Now, the article has won another award. This time, the ASQ Statistics Division has honored Jones and Nachtsheim with the 2010 Lloyd S. Nelson Award. The judges said the article offered "the greatest immediate impact to practitioners." The award will be presented at the annual Fall Technical Conference of the ASQ. Congratulations to Jones and Nachtsheim!

Would you like to read this doubly honored article? You can get a copy of "Split-Plot Designs: What, Why, and How" from the JMP website.

You may also want to check out a previous blog post about this article in which Jones explains why you need to know about split-plot designs.

Data Steps: It's a Math, Math World

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:26:42 +0000

Here is a blog that I found. It belongs to Michael O'Brien. I have not had a chance to really read through any of his posts, but it is on my to-do list as soon as I have a little tiny bit of time. Based on my quick cursory view of it, he seems to be writing quite a bit about statistics. And not the crazy insane look how whippety smart I am statistics writing that makes my eyes hurt and my

The SAS Dummy: SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3 is available

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:55:07 +0000

Shane and others have already discovered this. The new version of SAS Enterprise Guide is now available.

The latest version offers tremendous enhancements for all users, especially SAS programmers. It includes a new SAS program editing environment that supports syntax suggestions and autocomplete, embedded syntax reference help, and a SAS program code formatter. The new version continues to offer the best of SAS 9.2 with more support for ODS statistical graphics, a new Scatter Plot Matrix task, Create a Format from a Data Set, and a SAS code analyzer (or as my Australian friends spell it: "analyser"). You can use SAS Enterprise Guide directly with SAS Foundation, or easily integrate with the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office (also new with 4.3) and SAS Web Report Studio. See What's New for more information!

How do you get it? You need to refresh your SAS software order and download the latest. You typically do that by talking to your SAS account representative who can make that happen.

SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3 requires SAS 9.2. Technically, you can run it using any maintenance level of SAS 9.2, but the best experience will be using the latest maintenance -- Maintenance 3.

Open Mic: Are you ready for Fall? We are!

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:04:28 +0000

Contributed by Kirsten Hamstra, Web Marketing Specialist, SAS Publishing

It's hard to believe that the summer season is winding down and cooler weather, fall leaves and football (Go Panthers!) is around the corner! Around SAS, we are gearing up for the fall conference season. I recently asked the fans of our Facebook page if they have ever attended a SAS User Group event. Many of them have attended shows like SESUG (Southeast SAS User Group) and SAS Global Forum and have plans again this year.

If you haven't had an opportunity to join us for a user group event, take a look at the list below of upcoming shows. If there isn't an event in your area, let us know if you're interested in organizing one!

SESUG (SouthEast SAS Users Group): Sept. 26-28, 2010     Savannah, GA
MWSUG (MidWest SAS Users Group): Oct. 10-12, 2010      Milwaukee, WI
WUSS (Western Users of SAS Software): Nov. 3-5, 2010      San Diego, CA
SCSUG (South Central SAS Users Group): Nov. 7-9, 2010      Austin, TX
NESUG (NorthEast SAS Users Group): Nov. 14-18, 2010      Baltimore, MD
SAS Global Forum 2011: Apr. 4-7, 2011      Las Vegas, NV
PharmaSUG (Pharmaceutical Industry SAS Users Group): May 8-11, 2011      Nashville, TN

The SAS Training Post: Demystifying Sequence Analysis

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:28:08 +0000

In this interview, Robin Way, SAS Analytics Consultant talks about attending the M2010 Data Mining Conference for the fourth time (this year he'll be a speaker for the second time!), his talk on demystifying sequence analysis, his favorite part of the conference and his advice for first time attendees. My favorite part of this interview is when he talks about how M2010 is all about like-minded people sharing great ideas and not about vendors pushing products. I agree!

JMP Blog: A Chat with Plenary Speaker Jeanne Harris of Accenture

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:30:41 +0000

It's two weeks until the start of the JMP Discovery Summit. And whether you're attending, still hoping to attend or planning to follow the online coverage of this analytics conference, I've got a treat for you in this Q&A with Jeanne Harris of the Accenture Institute for High Performance and one of the plenary speakers for Discovery Summit. Her talk, scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 16, at 9:45 a.m. ET, is titled "Analytics at Work: Secrets of Data-Charged Organizations."

I had the pleasure of meeting Jeanne during her visit to SAS recently. She was delightful: brilliant, thoughtful, funny and a wonderful storyteller. Jeanne was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions about her work, her books and her upcoming speech.

Arati: What is a typical day for you at the Accenture Institute for High Performance?

Jeanne: The Institute for High Performance is Accenture’s global strategic think tank, with locations in the US, UK, China and India. The Institute develops and publishes practical insights into critical management issues and global economic trends. I am both an Executive Research Fellow at the Institute as well as a Senior Executive at Accenture. I am responsible for leading the Institute’s global research agenda in the areas of information, technology, and analytics. As a Senior Executive, I also spend time sharing my research with client executives and advising project teams who are building their organization’s analytical capabilities.

There really isn’t a "typical day," but I am often working in my home office outside of Chicago and collaborating with academics, research fellows and others on research projects. I try to write a bit every week, since our major deliverables are reports, articles and books. But then again, I travel quite a bit and may just as likely be offsite at a client or giving a speech.

Arati: What was your objective in writing Competing on Analytics with Tom Davenport?

Jeanne: I had a couple of personal objectives. The first was to share what we had learned about an important emerging business trend among high-performing companies. Secondly, I wanted to highlight examples of organizations that were forging a new and distinctive competitive advantage using analytics. And finally, I wanted to help bridge the gap between the language of business executives (who want to get better insights, make smarter decisions and get better results), analysts (who think about statistical techniques and tools) and IT managers (who speak in a completely different language – EDS, OLAP, Data Marts, etc.).

Arati: What’s a business problem that you’ve noticed that is crying out for analytics use?

Jeanne: One area where every company can benefit from a more analytical approach is pricing – simply because it has the greatest potential upside and because it is an area where decision making involves multiple functional areas and, as a result, is often poorly done.

Arati: What are you hoping that readers get from your new book, Analytics at Work?

Jeanne: Competing on Analytics was about the earliest and most aggressive adopters of analytics, but many other companies and organizations just wanted to know how analytical they were already -- and to become more so over time. They wanted frameworks, assessment tools, examples and further insights. So that’s what we set out to do with the new book. Analytics at Work provides a road map and tools for unleashing the potential buried in your company’s data. It shows how any organization can create an analytical capability that enables them to routinely make better decisions in every aspect of their business.

Arati: What kinds of things will you be sharing in your speech at Discovery Summit?

Jeanne: I will share some of the extensive research that indicates that organizations that run on analytics enjoy a significant competitive advantage. I will describe how market-leading firms are building their business strategies around their analytical capabilities — including organizations as diverse as Netflix, Harrah’s Entertainment, CEMEX and Procter & Gamble. Rather than “going with the gut” when pricing products, maintaining inventory, or hiring talent, managers in these firms use data, analysis, and systematic reasoning to make decisions that improve efficiency, risk-management and profits.

Drawing upon insights developed for the new book, Analytics at Work, I will also describe the elements that organizations need to assess and build their enterprisewide analytical capabilities. I will also include some diverse examples from organizations, including Best Buy, Royal Shakespeare Company, Progressive Insurance and the St. Louis Cardinals, to illuminate how any organization can take analytics out of the ivory tower and put analytics to work.

SAS Programming: VARIMAX rotation of PLS loadings

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 13:38:09 +0000

Partial Least Square is one of several supervised dimension reduction techniques and attracts attention in recent years. In the one hand, PLS is able to generate a series of scores that maximize linear correlation between dependent variables and independent variables, on the other hand, the loading of PLS can be regarded as similar counterpart from factor analysis, hence we can rotate the loadings from PLS therefore eliminate some of the non-significant variable in terms of prediction.


%macro PLSRotate(Loading, TransMat, PatternOut, PatternShort, 
                 method=VARIMAX, threshold=0.25);
/* VARIMAX rotation of PLS loadings. Only variables having 
   large loadings after rotation will enter the final model. 

   Loading dataset contains XLoadings output from PROC PLS 
   and should have variable called NumberOfFactors
   TransMat is the generated Transformation matrix;
   PatternOut is the output Pattern after rotation;
   PatternShort is the output Pattern with selected variables
*/

%local covars;
proc sql noprint;
     select name into :covars separated by ' '
  from   sashelp.vcolumn
  where  libname="WORK" & memname=upcase("&Loading") 
        &   upcase(name) NE "NUMBEROFFACTORS"
  &   type="num"
  ;
quit;
%put &covars;

data &Loading.(type=factor);
         set &Loading;
         _TYPE_='PATTERN';
         _NAME_=compress('factor'||_n_);
run;
ods select none;
ods output OrthRotFactPat=&PatternOut;
ods output OrthTrans=&TransMat; 
proc factor  data=&Loading   method=pattern  rotate=&method  simple; 
         var &covars;
run;
ods select all;

data &PatternShort;
     set &PatternOut;
  array _f{*} factor:;
  _cntfac=0;
  do _j=1 to dim(_f);  
        _f[_j]=_f[_j]*(abs(_f[_j])>&threshold); _cntfac+(_f[_j]>0); 
     end;
  if _cntfac>0 then output;
  drop _cntfac _j;
run;
%mend;

Here I try to replicate the case study in [1] which elaborated how to do and properties of VARIMAX rotation to PLS loadings. The PROC PLS output, after various tweaks on convergence criteria and singularity conditions, is still a little different from the result reported in [1] for factors other than the leading one, therefore, I will directly use the U=PS matrix in pp.215.



data loading;
input factor1-factor3;
cards;
-0.9280  -0.0481  0.2750
0.0563  -0.8833  0.5306
-0.9296  -0.0450  0.2720
-0.7534  0.1705  -0.5945
0.5917  -0.0251  -0.6450
0.9082  0.3345    0.1118
-0.8086  0.4551  -0.3800
;
run;


proc transpose data=loading  out=loading2;
run;

data loading2(type=factor);
     retain _TYPE_ "PATTERN";
  set loading2;
run;


ods select none;
ods output OrthRotFactPat=OrthRotationOut;
ods output OrthTrans=OrthTrans; 
proc factor  data=Loading2   method=pattern  rotate=varimax  simple; 
         var col1-col7;
run;
ods select all;

Reference:
[1] Huiwen Wang; Qiang Liu , Yongping Tu, "Interpretation of PLS Regression Models with VARIMAX Rotation", Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, Vol.48 (2005) pp207 – 219

Becoming a SAS Programmer in Pharmaceutical

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 19:28:37 +0000

Apple approved the first SAS conference iPhone App. yeah... albeit a beta version. Lots of good suggestions so far. http://bit.ly/wuss10

The SAS Training Post: SAS Enterprise Guide – Why Experienced Programmers Should Use It

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:13:00 +0000

Chris Hemedinger, author of The SAS Dummy blog and member of the team that builds SAS Enterprise Guide, and Stacey Syphus, SAS Enterprise Guide curriculum development manager, recently took some time to discuss the upcoming SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3 product release and why experienced programmers should give the SAS Enterprise Guide interface a closer look.

1. Seasoned programmers with years of success creating programs using traditional SAS tools may be asking themselves, “Why should I bother learning to program using SAS Enterprise Guide?” What’s your response?

CH: With the upcoming SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3 release, SAS customers will have productivity tools that they have never before found in a product from SAS: syntax completion and embedded syntax help, code analysis, code formatting, and more. We think that experienced programmers will view the 4.3 product, with its new features, as a premier programming environment for SAS.

SS: I agree. SAS Enterprise Guide is a fantastic tool for programmers and non-programmers alike.
SAS Enterprise Guide’s Programming Editor not only does almost everything the Editor allows in the SAS Display Manager (or SAS windowing environment), but, the Enterprise Guide 4.3 release will do much more than any other programming interface offered by SAS. To see a great list of features currently available that are beneficial to SAS programmers, you can read the paper, “Top 10 Reasons to Switch to SAS Enterprise Guide (Say Goodbye to PC SAS),” that was presented at a 2008 Northeast SAS User Group (NESUG) event.

2. What is one feature of SAS Enterprise Guide that you think an experienced programmer might find particularly advantageous?

SS: For the experienced programmers, one thing that I can think of that SAS Enterprise Guide offers that is different from previous SAS tools is that fact that in one single place you can combine multiple SAS programs and notes for documentation. It is also the easiest place to create SAS stored processes.

CH: For programmers: obviously, the new Program Editor with complete syntax help and autocomplete behavior.

3. Where can experienced programmers go to quickly get up-to-speed on using SAS Enterprise Guide?

SS: Our SAS Enterprise Guide for Experienced SAS Programmers course* has been specially designed to introduce experienced SAS programmers to SAS Enterprise Guide.

* The course incorporating SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3 software will be available in December 2010. Students attending the course prior to December who wish to see new 4.3 features should inquire with their instructor.

Key Happenings at support.sas.com: Learning SAS without access to the software at work or school

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:33:01 +0000

As you know, I use this blog space to answer some of the questions that are submitted in our feedback forms and surveys. There are many questions for which I have no answer. But, I'm a long-time SAS employee and that has its advantages. One of the many advantages is that when I don't know the answer, I usually know the person who does.

We have seen a lot of requests from people who want to learn SAS but are not actively enrolled at a university and do not have access to SAS software at work. So I asked my friends at SAS how I can help people learn SAS. The answer provided in this post comes from Cindy Puryear of SAS Publications Global Marketing.

Q: How do I learn SAS if I don't have access to the software at work or school?

A:
Beginning September 1, 2010, the SAS Learning Edition bundle will no longer be sold by SAS Publishing. SAS has decided to discontinue carrying the inventory for the CD/book version, historically sold by SAS and Amazon. SAS is partnered with www.onthehub.com, who sells a downloadable version of this bundle to continue your learning of SAS software.

The product sold on www.onthehub.com/sas is the same product that was sold by SAS, but does not include the bundled book (The Little SAS Book for Enterprise Guide 4.1). Additional changes are in how it’s being delivered (via the web). The price for a student is $60 and for a non-student is $125. SAS will continue to support SAS Learning Edition 4.1 install issues only until the expiration date of the software (12/31/2011).

Academic customers can checkout our SAS OnDemand for Academics offering which provides an online delivery model for teaching and learning data management and analytics. Visit our Website for more information on this and other OnDemand Solutions from SAS.

Other learning options:
Stacie Miller of SAS Training also pointed me to a collection of introductory courses designed for the SAS user who is just getting started.

SAS users have also created a New to SAS reference on sasCommunity.org that offers quite a few resource ideas.

Becoming a SAS Programmer in Pharmaceutical

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:10:23 +0000

Just got schedule for presentation on running SAS stored process on BlackBerry at MWSUG. Can I get to airport on time? http://bit.ly/mwsug

StudySAS Blog: How to get the details of formats from the format libraries:

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:58:45 +0000

If you are like me wanted to get the details of formats stored in the format library, here are two easy ways ….Proc catalog or Proc format Proc Catalog: Proc catalog will give us the details about name and type (numeric or character) of formats Syntax: proc catalog catalog = frmtdir.formats; contents; run; *FORMATS, is the name of the folder where all permanent formats are stored inside the library FRMTDIR. *If you want to get the details of temporary formats use WORK in place of frmtdir.formats; Proc Format: Use either SELECT or EXCLUDE statements to choose the formats for which you want to get the details. Syntax: proc format library = frmtdir.formats; select locfmt; run; This code will provide the details of LOCFMT in the FRMTDIR library. ('’)

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The SAS Training Post: Two webinars, two M2010 keynote speakers, free learning

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:50:05 +0000

I know that many of you will be traveling to Las Vegas in a couple of months to attend the annual Data Mining Conference. But, for those of you who won’t be attending, or for those who would love a sneak-peek beforehand, I’d like to share with you two upcoming webinars.

Dick DeVeaux, Professor of Statistics at Williams College will be presenting a Webinar on August 31 at 11:00 AM ET titled Data Mining – Fool’s Gold or the Mother Lode? You’ll learn how to avoid the potential dangers and mistakes that even seasoned professionals can make in the data mining process.

The following day, September 1st, John Elder, Founder and CEO of Elder Research and faculty member of the International Institute for Analytics (IIA) will be doing a webinar titled Data Mining with Quantitative and Qualitative Data. This Webinar is hosted by the IIA, which I’m happy to say they are also a sponsor of M2010!

So, if you’re wondering what it’s like to attend the annual Data Mining Conference, come check out one or both of these webinars to get an idea of what you can expect from the conference sessions. And hopefully I’ll also see you in Las Vegas!

Sacramento Valley SAS Users Group: SVSUG Summer Reading Program

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:05:08 +0000

Summer is winding down, but there is still plenty of hot weather left. To help you make the most of the last days of summer, we present the third entry in the SVSUG Summer Reading ProgramStatistical Graphics in SAS: An Introduction to the Graph Template Language and the Statistical Graphics Proceduresby Warren KuhfeldThis book covers two separate topics: the Graph Template Language (GTL) and

The SAS Training Post: A letter to my data

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:24:00 +0000

Dear Data,

You are immense. Too big for me to create summary reports that are useful, perform basic statistical analysis to draw meaningful conclusions and I can forget just looking at you directly.

I am going for help - to Las Vegas, in October.

Yep, and when I return you will be tamed. I will be able to do so much more with you… and make better decisions because of you. I will probably be able to ask better targeted questions, which would be a nice change. Not only that, but I will make some pretty valuable contacts so that if I have further questions about you, I can get some answers.

I am going to M2010, the Data Mining Conference. I hear the presentations are great, and lots of folks submit posters to present. The poster session is open to all data mining practitioners – from corporate or academic fields.

I will even get to meet the student poster winners, who will have won a scholarship for a free trip to the conference. The five most impressive posters submitted by students will be awarded with an all-inclusive trip to Las Vegas to attend M2010. The prize includes airfare, hotel, meals and a free conference registration. You must be a full-time student at an accredited university or college to be considered. Students who were full-time students in the 2009-2010 academic year are also eligible. Who knows, I just might have to submit one myself. But I had better get working because abstracts must be received by September 1, 2010!

Anyone can submit a poster, and I am looking forward to seeing them.

So, consider yourself forewarned.

Sincerely,
Elizabeth

SAS Programming: A Macro for SVD

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 12:13:45 +0000

SVD is at the heart of many modern machine learning algorithms. As a computing vehicle for PCA, SVD can be obtained using PROC PRINCOMP on the covariance matrix of a given matrix withou correction for intercept. With SVD, we are ready to carry out many tasks that are very useful but not readily available in SAS/STAT, such as TextMining using LSI [default algorithm used in SAS TextMiner [1]], multivariate Time Series Analysis using MSSA, Logistic-PLS, etc.

I also highly recommend the book "Principal Component Analysis 2nd Edition" by I. T. Jolliffe. Prof. Jollliffe smoothly gave a thorough review of PCA and its applications in various fields, and provided a road map for further research and reading.


%macro SVD(
           input_dsn,
           output_V,
           output_S,
           output_U,     
           input_vars,
           ID_var,
           nfac=0
           );

%local blank   para  EV  USCORE  n  pos  dsid nobs nstmt
       shownote  showsource  ;

%let shownote=%sysfunc(getoption(NOTES));
%let showsource=%sysfunc(getoption(SOURCE));
options nonotes  nosource;

%let blank=%str( );
%let EV=EIGENVAL;
%let USCORE=USCORE;
%let n=%sysfunc(countW(&input_vars));

%let dsid=%sysfunc(open(&input_dsn));
%let nobs=%sysfunc(attrn(&dsid, NOBS));
%let dsid=%sysfunc(close(&dsid));
%if  &nfac eq 0 %then %let nstmt=&blank;
%else %do;
     %let x=%sysfunc(notdigit(&nfac, 1)); 
  %if  &x eq 0 %then %do;
          %let nfac=%sysfunc(min(&nfac, &n));
          %let nstmt=%str(n=&nfac);
  %end;
  %else %do;
          %put ERROR: Only accept non-negative integer.;
          %goto exit;
  %end;
%end;

%if &output_U ne %str() %then %do;
    %let outstmt=  out=&output_U.(keep=&ID_var  Prin:);
%end;
%else %do;
    %let outstmt=&blank;
%end;

%let options=noint cov noprint  &nstmt;

proc princomp data=&input_dsn  
             /* out=&input_dsn._score */
              &outstmt
              outstat=&input_dsn._stat(where=(_type_ in ("&USCORE", "&EV")))  &options;
     var &input_vars;
run;
data &output_S;
     set &input_dsn._stat;
     format Number 7.0;
     format EigenValue Proportion Cumulative 7.4;
     keep Number EigenValue  Proportion Cumulative;
     where _type_="&EV";
     array _X{&n} &input_vars;
     Total=sum(of &input_vars);
     Cumulative=0;
     do Number=1 to dim(_X);
     EigenValue=_X[number];
     Proportion=_X[Number]/Total;
     Cumulative=Cumulative+Proportion;  
     output;
  end;
run;

%if &output_V ne %str() %then %do;
proc transpose data=&input_dsn._stat(where=(_TYPE_="&USCORE")) 
               out=&output_V.(rename=(_NAME_=variable))
               name=_NAME_;
     var &input_vars;
     id _NAME_;
  format &input_vars 8.6;
run;
%end;

/* calculate Singular Values */
%if &output_S ne %str() %then %do;
data &output_S;
     set &input_dsn._stat ;
  where _TYPE_="EIGENVAL";
  array _s{*} &input_vars;
  array _x{&nfac, 3} _temporary_; 
  Total=sum(of &input_vars, 0);
  _t=0;
  do _i=1 to &nfac;
     _x[_i, 1]=_s[_i]; _x[_i, 2]=_s[_i]/Total; 
  if _i=1 then _x[_i, 3]=_x[_i, 2]; 
  else _x[_i, 3]=_x[_i-1, 3]+_x[_i, 2];
  _t+sqrt(_x[_i, 2]);
  end;
  do _i=1 to &nfac;
     Number=_i;  
  EigenValue=_x[_i, 1]; Proportion=_x[_i, 2]; Cumulative=_x[_i, 3];
     S=sqrt(_x[_i, 2])/_t;  SinguVal=sqrt(_x[_i, 1] * &nobs);
  keep Number EigenValue  Proportion Cumulative  S SinguVal;
     output;
  end;
run;
%end;

/* calculate U=XV/S */
%if &output_U ne %str() %then %do; 
data &output_U;
     array _S{&nfac}  _temporary_;  
     if _n_=1 then do;
        do j=1 to &nfac;
           set  &output_S(keep=SinguVal)  point=j;
           _S[j]=SinguVal; if abs(_S[j]) < CONSTANT('MACEPS') then _S[j]=CONSTANT('BIG');
        end;        
    end;
    set &output_U;
    array _A{*}  Prin1-Prin&nfac;
    do _j=1 to dim(_A);
        _A[_j]=_A[_j]/_S[_j];
    end;
    keep &ID_var Prin1-Prin&nfac ;
run;
%end;

%exit: 
options &shownote  &showsource;
%mend;

Reference:
[1] Albright, Russ, "Taming Text with the SVD", SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, available at :
http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/EMiner/TamingTextwiththeSVD.pdf

[2] Jolliffe, I. T. , "Principal Component Analysis", 2nd Ed., Springer Series in Statistics, 2002

JMP Blog: Discovery Summit Less Than a Month Away, More Discounts than Ever Before

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:50:41 +0000

You may have less than a month to register for Discovery Summit 2010, but you have more opportunities than ever before to attend at a discounted rate.

Check to see if you qualify for premium pricing through one of the following discount programs:

•Corporate Colleague Discount: Has a colleague from your organization registered at full price? If so, you can sign up at half the price.

•JMP or SAS Users Group Member Discount: Are you a current member of a registered users group? If so, you can sign up at half the price.

•Professor and Student Discount: Do you teach or take classes full time? If so, you can sign up at half the price with a school-affiliated e-mail address.

•Government Discount: Are you employed by the government? If so, you can sign up at half the price with a government e-mail address.

Can you tell we want to make it as easy as possible for you to attend? Take us up on the offer! Discovery Summit is a world-class analytic exchange for an exceptional value. We want you to conclude the week feeling energized by the content of the sessions and from your hallway conversations with colleagues.

We’ve seen time and again that our conference guests leave ready to make a mark with analytics. Leave a lasting impression. Touch upon greatness. Our goal is to provide a full agenda that helps you achieve just that – without draining your bank account.

Take a glance at the speakers to see what’s in store. Hope to see you there!

The Princess of Science: ‫"על חלל וחוצנים" עם דודי זוסימן‬

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 06:13:09 +0000

‫אחוז ניכר של האוכלוסייה מאמין שחלליות מאוכלסות בחייזרים המבקרים אותנו מדי יום. מה ניתן לעשות כנגד תנועה שכזו? אילו כלים מציע לנו המדע לחקירת עדויות לכאורה כאלו? התשובות בהרצאתו של דודי זוסימן במפגש"ספקנים בפאב" הקרוב. הספקנות מוצגת במיטבה. ההרצאה תכלול סרטונים מדהימים של עב”מים המציתים את הדמיון! דודי זוסימן, מהנדס חלל, כיום מנהל את תוכנית [...]‬

platformadmin.com: Default Role / Capability Matrices for SAS® 9.2

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:50:37 +0000

Have you ever worked on a SAS 9.2 installation where someone has modified the capabilities of the predefined roles, and you need to reset them back to the default configuration? Or perhaps you are trying to see if there is a particular capability and want to search using a keyword, rather than manually reading through the list in SAS Management Console?

If you answered yes to any of these questions then you might want to check out the SAS® 9.2 Intelligence Platform Desktop Application Administration Guide (PDF, HTML) and the SAS® 9.2 Intelligence Platform Web Application Administration Guide, Third Edition (PDF, HTML).

Each of the SAS applications that support roles has a matrix showing the available capabilities for that application and how those capabilities map to the application’s predefined roles. If you need to reset the predefined roles then these matrices provide the information you need. Alternatively, if you want to search for a particular capability then you can use your web-browser/PDF-viewer’s find tool to look for keywords like library, OLAP or Join.

Here is a quick list of links to the specific pages containing the role/capability matrices for each application:

On a side note, if any SAS developers or product managers happen to read this post, I think it would be great if you could search/filter capabilities in SAS Management Console. There are lots of capabilities to look through and I can only imagine the list getting longer in future versions of SAS. Perhaps a reset-role-to-default-capabilities feature too? Perhaps I should make a SASware Ballot suggestion.

Key Happenings at support.sas.com: Demystifying SAS Grid Computing

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:35:22 +0000

Contributed by Bill Nasuti, Global Professional Services, SAS

We often hear folks refer to SAS Grid as if it were a single entity, when in reality it consists of many facets. SAS Grid provides a rich functional toolset to improve performance and resource utilization of SAS applications and programs. Let’s dig a little deeper and look at the different ways SAS Grid can help us improve performance and improve resource utilization.

SAS Grid Computing involves employing multiple computers collectively to improve hardware utilization and reduce processing times; this is often times referenced under the HPC or High Performance Computing umbrella. SAS Grid computing is built upon Platform LSF which enables our ability to manage workloads across multiple platforms. By employing a third party product like Platform LSF, we can decouple SAS from the underlying OS. This provides us the opportunity to more efficiently manage SAS application workloads for many virtual and physical platforms.

Let’s take a look at how we can utilize this exciting technology with SAS.

Continue reading "Demystifying SAS Grid Computing"

the SAS-BI blog: Creating a Relational OLAP Cube (ROLAP)

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:00:07 +0000

SAS allows for three different cube storage mechanisms:
1. MOLAP
The traditional SAS OLAP Cube will all aggregations / nway stored on a physical file structure accessible by the SAS OLAP Cube Server.
2. ROLAP
A relational OLAP cube - where no aggregations are stored and SAS points to the RDBMS table structures.
3. HOLAP
A hybrid OLAP approach that offers a bit of both worlds.

As a team of SAS and Teradata knowledge leaders write in the 2009 User Group Paper "Using SAS OLAP Server for a ROLAP Scenario", the advantanges of going with ROLAP include immediate data update availability to OLAP users, using dramatically smaller storage space and reducing build times required for the OLAP Cube.

But how do you build one?

The steps are pretty straightforward and almost too easy.

Utilize source tables from RDBMS System (SQL, Oracle, etc) that are defined in SAS Metadata
Select ‘Do not create an NWAY aggregation’ checkbox on Aggregation Screen in OLAP Cube Editor

platformadmin.com: Multiple Inheritance Examples in SAS® 9.2

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 07:54:56 +0000

Thanks to Ronan, in his comment on my previous Inheritance Paths post, I now know of an example of multiple inheritance with SAS 9.2 metadata security. As I mentioned in my prior post, the documentation leads you to believe that multiple inheritance, although greatly reduced in SAS 9.2, nevertheless still exists. Unfortunately the documentation does not give any examples.

Ronan pointed out that you can see an example of multiple inheritance in the area of Foundation Services. He explains how to navigate to the example via the SAS Management Console Authorization Manager plug-in. You can also use the Foundation Services Manager too.

Here is a screenshot of the Inheritance tab, in the Advanced Authorization Properties dialog, for the Authentication Service under the Foundation Services Manager plug-in’s Remote Services entry.

Notice how the Authentication Service is inheriting from multiple other ServiceComponent objects as well as the Core folder it is contained in.

I was encouraged to find another example which is shown in this next screenshot.

In this example, under the Table Server Manager plug-in, we can see the DataSourceName object named SharedServices inherits from the ServiceComponent object named SharedServices, as well as the ServerComponent object named SASTS – Table Server.

Of course, these examples of multiple inheritance are unlikely to have any significance to the majority of platform administrators, as they will mostly be securing objects such as folders, that have single inheritance paths. However, considering that the access decision flow still caters for multiple inheritance, and the documentation alludes to the fact there are still some rare objects that do have multiple inheritance, I feel more comfortable having some concrete examples.

Please let me know if you find any other examples.

platformadmin.com: Roles (or not) in Access Controls: SAS® 9.1.3 vs SAS® 9.2

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 05:45:53 +0000

Today I noticed a difference between SAS 9.1.3 and SAS 9.2 with respect to the use of roles in metadata security access controls.

In SAS 9.1.3 it was possible, though not recommended, to use roles in access controls such as Access Control Entries (ACEs) and Access Control Templates (ACTs). Here is a screenshot of SAS Management Console 9.1 where I am in the process of adding a group to an ACT. Notice that the SAS Web Report Studio roles are available for use (I have highlighted them with a red square).

I noticed today that SAS 9.2 prevents you, at least from within SAS Management Console, from using roles in access controls. Here is an equivalent screenshot of SAS Management Console 9.2, where I am also in the process of adding a group to an ACT. This time only the normal groups are available for use, none of the roles are available.

It was good to see this enhancement in SAS 9.2, as it helps promote good practices. Roles exist to provide a container for groups of users to gain access to application functionality. It is not recommended that they be used in access controls that secure general metadata objects such as folders, servers etc. SAS 9.1.3 introduced roles, with hard-coded or implicit capabilities, where they were used only by SAS Web Report Studio as far as I am aware. The use of roles was significantly expanded in SAS 9.2, with configurable/customizable capabilities to allow administrators to control the availability of application functionality in SAS Management Console, SAS Enterprise Guide, SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office, SAS Web Report Studio and SAS BI Dashboard.

I was surprised I hadn’t noticed this improvement until today, but then I guess I am not usually inclined to use roles in access controls

If you want to find out more about roles and capabilities in SAS 9.2, I would definitely recommend reading Kathy Wisniewski’s paper Be All That You Can Be: Best Practices in Using Roles to Control Functionality in SAS® 9.2 from SAS Global Forum 2010 available from http://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings10/324-2010.pdf

Avocet Solutions: The Little SAS Book

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:25:07 +0000

Answer: It certainly doesn’t pay authors.

My sister recently told me that the Sacramento public library lists one copy of The Little SAS Book in their catalog. However, it turns out that someone has stolen that one copy.

I figure that’s a compliment of sorts: Someone wanted The Little SAS Book enough to steal it. To tell the truth I was flattered that the Sacramento public library had a copy of The Little SAS Book at all. Next time I’m in downtown Sacramento, I must remember to donate a new copy of The Little SAS Book to the library, and while I’m at it, I might as well throw in a copy of The Little SAS Book for Enterprise Guide.

The case of someone stealing a single copy of a book from a public library isn’t a major crime. A greater concern—at least to authors—is the evidence that electronic copies are being freely pirated. Recently, I ran into a friend who is a student. Looking at her laptop computer, I saw that she was displaying The Little SAS Book. It was a sharp-looking PDF version. Even I don’t have a PDF copy of The Little SAS Book! “Wow,” I said, “Where did you get that?” She sheepishly admitted that it had been given to her by another student. She had neglected to mention this to me because she knew it was an illegal copy, and that I hadn’t been paid a cent for it. Of course, this particular friend has a legal copy (that I gave her), so I’m not bothered by the fact that she now has a second copy even if it is illegal.

What does concern me is the fact that royalties for The Little SAS Book series have been declining, and are down 40% compared to three years ago. During those years we worked hard and published two new editions. So, logically our royalties should be going up, not down. I can’t help wondering if the sales have dropped at least partly because people are using pirated copies instead of legal ones. I’m grateful for the good sales we have had in the past, and I wouldn’t mind people passing around pirated copies if our royalties held steady. But the truth is: I have to pay my bills just like everyone else. The problem of piracy is not unique to me, nor to SAS Press, nor even to books. This is a bigger problem that applies to music and movies too, and you can bet I’ll be watching to see how it turns out.

Becoming a SAS Programmer in Pharmaceutical

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:09:12 +0000

Article seems to suggest SAS released software on iPad. Does anyone know when since I don't see it on the AppStore? http://bit.ly/aGPm4K

The Princess of Science: ‫מקבץ 4‬

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:09:40 +0000

‫שלום לכולם. הפעם מקבץ ארוך למדי, עקב משך הזמן הארוך מאז המקבץ הקודם. השבוע צוינו 100 שנה למותה של פלורנס נייטינגייל. בעיית המעטפות (עליה כתבתי לפני כשנתיים) הרימה שוב את ראשה, הפעם בבלוג של וייאם בריגס, שהקדיש שתי רשימות לנושא. את הרשימה הראשונה אפילו קראתי. (המשך הפריט גולש לפרטים טכניים, אז מי שלא מעוניין מוזמן [...]‬

The SAS Training Post: Short on time, but need to learn?

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 20:56:54 +0000

Those of you who have anxiously been awaiting the next installments in my "What is there to do in Cary?" series may have noticed a distinct lack of output over the last month or so. This is due to the fact that I have been forced to spend my time actually teaching courses, rather than sampling local restaurants for your benefit!

The schedule of an instructor not only makes it hard to research restaurants and update blogs, it also makes it hard to keep up with the technical stuff. For example, although I don't teach any of the SQL courses, it's useful for me to know a fairly good amount about SQL so that I can answer SQL-related questions from my students. So, I figured it would be a good idea to take the SQL 1: Essentials class to brush up on things. Unfortunately, I ran into the same dilemma that a lot of you have: (1) the classes in Cary were on dates when I couldn't attend, and (2) the courses on dates that I could attend were in locations I couldn't get to. My next option was Live Web, but that required 4 half-day sessions. Well, the first four available days I had that matched the Live Web offerings were in December! (We instructors keep very busy)

With the prospect of being innundated with SQL questions from my students that I couldn't answer, I searched for any alternative, and I found the perfect one--e-Learning! If you're not familiar with it, SAS e-Learning is a series of pre-recorded courses that cover the same topics as many instructor-based and Live Web courses. The advantage is that you can view them (and do the excercises) as your own pace. For someone who is in his office an average of 3 days every two weeks, this is a great alternative. So, I checked out the SQL 1: Essentials course at http://support.sas.com/training/elearn/, and became an SQL expert over the course of 2 weeks! If you need to learn some aspect of SAS, but you don't have a block of time available, I highly recommend the e-Learning courses (and I am not being paid to say this; I'm just a satisfied customer).

BTW, another aspect of e-Learning that you may find useful is e-Lectures. This is a series of recorded lectures that run 20-80 minutes and cover topics that are not included in regular courses. Check them out at https://support.sas.com/edu/elearning.html?ctry=us&productType=electure

The SAS Training Post: The Culture of the M2010 Data Mining Conference

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:50:27 +0000

Dr. Goutam Chakraborty is a professor of marketing and founder of the SAS and OSU Data Mining Certificate Program at Oklahoma State University. He has been involved with the annual data mining conference for five years and also teaches a Business Knowledge Series course, Getting the Most Out of Testing in Direct/Internet Marketing. Read below to get his unique perspective of M2010 and more information about his course, which he’ll be teaching at the conference.

1. You’ve had numerous roles at the M-series of data mining conferences: co-chair, speaker, sponsor, attendee and instructor. What information can you share about the conference with first-time attendees?

GC: This conference is really focused on data mining and analytics and not very large in size. As a result, you will have a chance not just to meet but actually get to know some of the experts in the industry and academia who are working on data mining and analytics problems. First time attendees should feel totally comfortable to walk up to any speaker, session chair, conference chair and get to know them. That is the culture of this conference.

2. Why do you continue to be involved with M2010?

GC: Because it is the place to be when your interests lie in learning new tools/techniques/applications in data mining and business analytics. Frankly, I get more out of attending this conference than many other conferences (academic or professional) that I have attended in my last 20+ years .

3. You are a professor in the Department of Marketing at Oklahoma State University and you’ve had several teams of your students compete in the Data Mining Shootout. A few of your teams have placed in the top 3. How does this competition serve the academic community?

GC: The shootout run by SAS and sponsored by Dow and CMRC (Central Michigan University Research Corp) is a vital link in development of students' skills in working with real business problems and answering those problems using data mining. It gives students from any university a chance to compete against their peers from other universities and in the process discover how good they really are. Let’s face it – competition brings out the best among each of the student teams and regardless of their actual standing all teams learn a lot in the process.

Continue reading "The Culture of the M2010 Data Mining Conference"

platformadmin.com: Best Practices with SAS® 9 Metadata Security Presentation at SFANZ 2010

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:02:51 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation at SFANZ last week, especially those who asked questions and provided feedback. If you would like a copy of the presentation, you can download it here in both PowerPoint and PDF formats. It should also be available from the SAS Forum Australia & New Zealand site too.

These are my notes that go with the slides …

Abstract

SAS9 metadata security is becoming increasingly more important as SAS9 platform installations continue to grow and evolve. With more content, larger user communities, and a wider variety of application interfaces, time-poor SAS platform administrators are looking for better ways to manage security with their organizations valuable metadata and data resources. Knowledge and use of current SAS9 metadata security best practices can be a key differentiator between stressed platform administrators and well organized administrators. One group might spend their time applying ad-hoc quick fixes, and tracking down authorization conflicts, whereas the other group will plan ahead to reduce day to day overheads and minimize the impact of change. This paper will provide an outline of some of the key SAS9 metadata security best practices together with information on where to go to find out more.

Slides 1 & 2 : Title / Agenda

I will start with a quick introduction, move onto practices that are more procedural in nature and then cover some of the major implementation practices. This is quite a large topic for the short space of time available and so I can only really scratch the surface. I hope that you decide to discover more about this topic, so I will finish up by pointing you at some resources where you can find more information, including my blog where I expand on some of these topics.

I’d like to start out with a quick intro to metadata security with a show of hands. Please raise your hands if you have used SAS Enterprise Guide to view the contents of a SAS table… Now raise your hands if you have every created or run a SAS stored process… Now those who have used SAS Data Integration Studio to create and run ETL jobs… How about those who have used SAS Management Console to manage servers… All of those tasks are based on things represented in SAS metadata and the ability for you to view and possibly update them is managed through metadata security and access controls. The SAS platform administrator is responsible for appropriately securing the metadata to meet business requirements. Managing access to metadata in an efficient manner is not always easy and that’s where knowledge of best practices can help.

Slide 3: Best Practices

Best practices can be thought of as collected wisdoms from the community. They are shared methods proven through experience to be more effective than others. They might be more robust, cost less to implement, take less time to manage, and be easier to change as requirements evolve. Given enough time most people will discover these methods for themselves. We make mistakes along the way and learn from them for next time. People often share these experiences and contribute to the knowledge of the community as a whole. If we can learn best practices from other people we can save ourselves time and effort.

Here are some of the things that can be avoided with knowledge of metadata security best practices:

An ad-hoc security implementation, triggered by individual email/phone requests, consisting of hundreds or thousands of per-user, per-object based access controls
A chaotic implementation with unpredictable or unexpected access controls (only unexpected from the administrator’s perspective – the metadata server will always make a consistent access decision but it may not be what the administrator expects due to a large number of ad-hoc, unexpected and conflicting access controls)
A metadata security implementation which is undocumented, practically undocumentable, or out-of-sync with the available documentation.
The significant effort that may be required to rationalize and consolidate an ad-hoc security implementation when business access rules change.

This presentation consists of a mixture of my own experiences as well as information I have picked up from others along the way. You will probably recognize some of these from your own discoveries too.

I will start with a few procedural practices…

Slide 4: Continuous Learning

To understand and implement best practices we need a solid understanding of the software. Just as the software we use evolves over time, so do best practices. They change to match changes in software, and also change as new or improved techniques are discovered. For example, best practices with SAS 9.2 differ somewhat from best practices with SAS 9.1.3. To keep up-to-date with best practices we need continuous learning by interacting with other people in the same field and sharing experiences. Here are some of the mechanisms by which we can stay up-to-date. They include SAS training courses, SAS certification, SAS documentation, conference papers, online communities as well as knowledge of additional 3rd party software such as Metacoda Security Plug-ins.

Slide 5: Concept Awareness (1): Identity Hierarchy

As a platform administrator, there are 3 key concepts that we need to know about in order to understand metadata security access controls, plan a security implementation and assess the impact of changes. The first of these is the identity hierarchy. You can think of this as a tree consisting of the user and the groups they are a member with multiple branches that represent nested group memberships. This hierarchy plays a key role in resolving access decision conflicts. Here we have an example of the identity hierarchy for a user as is shown by Metacoda Security Plug-ins.

I discuss this topic further in a separate Identity Hierarchy blog post.

Slide 6: Concept Awareness (2): Inheritance Paths

Another important concept is inheritance paths. Most metadata objects inherit their access controls from other objects. An understanding of inheritance paths helps us know where those inherited permissions are most likely to come from, and where any changes we make are likely to flow to. There have been some significant changes between SAS 9.1.3 and SAS 9.2.

With SAS 9.1.3 a number of objects had multiple inheritance paths where they inherited their access controls from multiple parents. Whilst this provided flexibility, it also caused some confusion as it was necessary to consistently secure all inheritance paths otherwise you could end up with situations where an object that was secured through one inheritance path was unsecured through another.

SAS 9.2 replaces this with a single inheritance model which is simpler to understand and easier to secure.

The SAS Management Console Inheritance tab, part of SAS 9.2 and available from SAS Institute as a plug-in for SAS 9.1.3, provides a mechanism for us to view the inheritance paths for an object.

I discuss this topic further in a separate Inheritance Paths blog post.

Slide 7: Concept Awareness (3): Access Decision Flow

The last major concept I will mention is the access decision flow. These are the rules the SAS metadata server follows to determine for a specific user, a specific object and a specific permission whether that user is granted or denied access.

The flow diagram shown here comes from the SAS® 9.2 Intelligence Platform Security Administration Guide, Chapter 5 Authorization Model in the section titled Authorization Decisions.

The layout of the diagram has changed from SAS 9.1.3 to SAS 9.2. Whilst it looks complex to start with, the rules are straightforward and memorable. It does not take long before you can make a determination yourself without having to refer to the diagram.

Some might say that with the new explore permissions tool in SAS 9.2 it is no longer necessary to understand this flow chart. I disagree because whilst the tool allows you to see the permissions for a specific situation, it is an understanding of the rules behind it that allows an administrator to think more generally and understand the ramifications and potential conflicts for any changes that she may make.

Slides 8 & 9: Plan Well

As with many things, time invested in planning upfront pays dividends later. Planning will help you develop an efficient security plan that meets your requirements. A clear idea of your goals will help you avoid an overly complex implementation that is hard to manage.

These are some of the things worth considering when you are planning your SAS metadata security implementation:

Collaborate with everyone who has a stake or may be able to help. As well as talking to the business about their security requirements, talk to the IT department too. They will know of any general security policies that you may need to be aware of.
Your IT department will also be able to help you integrate with enterprise directories such as Microsoft Active Directory or LDAP which will be a major time saver for you. Whilst it is not trivial to implement, enterprise directory integration is well worth the effort as it allows you to automatically synchronize your SAS metadata users and groups with existing users and groups in your enterprise directory and leave user and group management to your IT department.
Be prepared for the security requirements to evolve over time as the business itself changes with new projects, new teams, new data sources, new servers etc. You may also need to be ready for changes and new discoveries during your implementation. A good security plan will help you to make changes without requiring a significant effort.
Consider which groups of users will perform which job roles and identify the SAS software and features they will need access to. In SAS 9.1.3 this will help you with your security plan and software distribution requirements. In SAS 9.2 you will also be able to use this to plan your roles & capabilities to determine which SAS software features they will have access to, such as the ability within Enterprise Guide to save files to the local computer and the accessibility of the various plug-ins in SAS Management Console.
A well thought out tree folder structure that partitions content based on projects, organizational structure and/or job roles can significantly simplify your security plan and minimize ongoing maintenance.
Once you have your folder structure planned, you can determine how you should secure it.
Remember that you will also need to secure content, such as servers, groups and access controls that are not contained in folders.
When your plan is ready, document it, then implement it using your documentation.
Plan your testing too. It is easy to underestimate the amount of time required for sufficient testing, especially if security is important to your organization.

Slide 10: Develop a Security Plan

When developing your security plan consider what type of model you require and how complex it needs to be. You will want to keep it as simple as possible whilst still meeting access requirements. Try to avoid an overly complex plan.

You might have an “Open” security model if you organization doesn’t have any specific access requirements. In this model anyone can do almost anything given access to the appropriate software.

Moving on from this, smaller organizations, perhaps just starting out with SAS, might have a basic security model where their users are divided up into administrators who are also developers, a single group of authors and everyone else who are consumers.

Alternatively, larger organizations with more mature SAS installations may need a more complex security model. This might have multiple administrators, independent teams of developers, multiple groups of authors and multiple groups of consumers all with different access requirements. There may well also be a need for OLAP member level and BI row level security.

Now onto a few implementation best practices…

Slides 11 & 12: Prefer ACTs over ACEs

There are 2 ways of securing content in the SAS metadata repository.

The first is to use explicit permissions on individual objects – also known as Access Control Entries (or ACEs).

The second is to create re-usable packages of identities and associated permissions called Access Control Templates (or ACTs) and apply them wherever they are needed.

Whilst ACEs are very simple to apply, especially for a first-time administrator, it is best practice to use ACTs. This is because ACTs are much easier to manage and are change-friendly. When the time comes, as it always does, to change the rules you only have to change the definition of the ACT, and that change will flow through everywhere the ACT has been applied. If you secure with ACEs you will need to visit and change each one individually.

As an administrator one of my goals is to try to minimize ACEs, replacing them with appropriate ACTs where possible. This screenshot shows our ACE Reviewer software displaying a list of ACEs for me to target.

When minimizing ACEs, be aware that there are a number of ACEs that cannot, or should not, be removed. A number of SAS applications create and manage their own ACEs, and these ACEs should be left alone. Additionally, ACEs used for OLAP member level security, or BI row level security, cannot be replaced with ACTs.

Slide 13: Prefer Groups over Users

It is an industry standard best practice to secure content using groups rather than users. This is not specific to SAS software, but we follow the same principle when using SAS software. The user population, their location and roles within the organization, changes very regularly whereas groups are relatively static. Users change, they join and leave the organization, they move departments or get seconded, and they get sick or go on leave. Don’t be afraid of groups containing 1 user, you might only have 1 marketing director, but if she goes on extended leave and someone else takes over her role for a short while, you will be glad you created a Marketing Directors group.

One of our goals as administrators is to have a security plan where we can manage access on a day to day basis, not by changing access controls, but by adding and removing users from groups.

To keep on top of this best practice we can regularly look for access controls that refer to users and improve them by removing the users and replacing them with appropriate groups. This screenshot shows our ACT Reviewer software highlighting an ACT that contains a reference to a user.

Slide 14: Secure Folders over Objects

Another security best practice, that is not just specific to SAS software, is to secure groups of related content using folders rather than securing the individual items.

If you find yourself securing individual objects, then you may be creating a significant maintenance headache for yourself. Instead, think about whether the item can be moved either to an existing folder, with appropriate access controls, or to a new folder specifically created and secured for the new access requirements.

We can create hierarchies of folders that are aligned with our access requirements, whether they are project, organizational structure or job role based, or a hybrid. Then we take advantage of inheritance paths, where objects inherit their access controls from the folder they are contained in, and secure the high level folders with ACTs, leaving the individual objects alone to inherit permissions.

One of the improvements in SAS 9.2 that helps us with this practice is the WriteMemberMetadata permission. This permission allows us to grant access to modify the contents of folders without having to grant permission to modify the folder itself.

Slides 15 & 16: Wide Denials, Narrow Grants

For me, this practice is one that can help avoid significant headaches with permission denials and identity hierarchy conflicts through precedence mismatches.

This is best explained by an example…

A folder has been created to contain content that should only be visible to members of the Australia group and not members of the Asia/Pacific group. It has been secured to grant the ReadMetadata permission to Australia and deny it from Asia/Pacific.

But there is a problem with this…

Sam and Tara are both members of the Australia and Asia/Pacific groups but by different mechanisms:

Sam is a direct member of Australia and an indirect member of Asia/Pacific because the Australia group is a member of the Asia/Pacific group. Due to identity precedence rules Sam can see the folder.

Tara has been made a direct member of both groups when she should have been a direct member of the Australia group only. Due to identity precedence conflict rules Tara cannot see the folder even though she is in the Australia group.

With an understanding of identity hierarchies and the access decision flow, this makes sense and is easily corrected by removing Tara as a direct member of the Asia/Pacific group. However, in practice, these identity precedence mismatches can easily recur, and if we are using enterprise directory integration we may not be in direct control of the group memberships either.

A solution is to only ever deny permissions widely to the PUBLIC (or SASUSERS) group and then explicitly grant permissions narrowly back to those specific groups that require access. Because PUBLIC/SASUSERS are lowest in the identity hierarchy the potential for these identity precedence mismatches is practically eliminated.

Slide 17: Thorough Testing

After implementing your security plan it is good practice to test it thoroughly. This is especially important in a high security environment where it may also be a legal requirement. Testing will give you more confidence that there are no conflicts with unexpected grants or denials of permissions.

Test a variety of different classes of users: users who are not registered in metadata, users who are registered in metadata but not direct members of any groups. Test users with single and multiple group memberships looking for potential conflicts.

Test a variety of different actions such as open, update, rename, move and delete, to test a variety of different permissions.

One of the benefits we have as administrators is the ability to impersonate users. We can use our own credentials to log in as a specific user and test access as if we were them. Remember that this impersonation is only at the SAS metadata level and not at the operating system level.

I also like to set up a private administrator-only environment. I call it Lev9 and use it for disruptive or destructive testing that you would not want to do even in your development environment. It allows you to keep your developers happy too. Disruptive testing includes things like significant changes to high level access controls that could affect a significant number of users. Destructive testing allows you to test the ability or inability to delete important things like servers and high level folders without impacting other users.

Slide 18: Regular Reviews

Your security plan and its implementation will both evolve, and sometimes in different directions. If security is important for your organization then you will want to review your plan and its implementation regularly, update the plan to meet changing business requirements, and keep the implementation in line with the plan updating the documentation accordingly.

This screenshot shows some of the security implementation documentation that can be exported from our software. We have had a number of people approach us about this because they needed a mechanism whereby they could generate this documentation and publish it internally and regularly to prove that appropriate metadata security controls have been put in place.

Slide 19: Summary

That brings me to the end of the best practices part of my presentation. The key things I hope you will take away from this presentation are to keep learning, plan your implementation well, secure using ACTs rather than ACEs, groups rather than users, and folders rather than objects. Be careful with permission denials, test your implementation carefully and thoroughly, and review it regularly.

Slides 20 & 21: Resources (SAS 9.2) / (SAS 9.1.3)

If you would like to find out more about this topic, I have a couple of slides in the presentation with a list of resources that will help. I won’t go through the list here but you will find it in the online version of the presentation. There are resources for SAS 9.1.3 as well as resources for SAS 9.2. All of these links are also in a prior blog post and on my platformadmin.com blog Reading List.

Slide 22: About Metacoda

Just before I finish I would like to mention my company Metacoda. We are a SAS Alliance member that specializes in the development of software to integrate with SAS software with the goal of improving your productivity through enhanced metadata visibility. Many of the screenshots you have seen in this presentation were taken from our Metacoda Security Plug-ins product. If you would like to find out more then please visit our web site. We also have a flyer in your conference bag with more details.

Slide 23: Q&A

If you have any comments or questions please feel free to contact me using any of the mechanisms available here.

the SAS-BI blog: Discovering the Power of ODS ExcelXP Tagsets

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:16:43 +0000

The ODS ExcelXP tagset is pretty powerful stuff. Hidding columns, changing the print layout to landscape, updating the spreadsheet names, defining the default column width and row height, etc - it's all available using options within the ExcelXP setup.

So the best thing to do is grab some documentation. Fortunetly, there is a doc provided directly in your SAS log file by adding the option (doc="help") within the tagset statement. An example of using this option directly from Enterprise Guide or Base SAS is below:

ods tagsets.ExcelXP path="c:\temp" file="exporttest.xls" style=sasweb options(doc="help);

Are there any Stored Process Creators in the house?

There are a couple notes for you.
1. You must estabilish these options BEFORE the %stpbegin; statement.
For example by including these %lets:
%let _odsdest = tagsets.ExcelXP;
%let _odsoptions = options=(doc="help");

2. If you are expecting the user to receive this file via the Web Interface, you will still need to include stpsrv_header options - also before the %stpbegin; statement.

data _null_;
rc=stpsrv_header('Content-type', 'application/vnd.ms-excel');
rc=stpsrv_header('Content-disposition', 'attachment; filename=Excel_Export.xls');
run;

Additional Information on the ExcelXP Tagsets for ODS:

Becoming a SAS Programmer in Pharmaceutical

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:22:09 +0000

SAS, the power to win? Applying analytics to NBA for basketball, cool combination. http://bit.ly/sasnba

The Princess of Science: ‫הודעה: הרצאה בפטיבל אייקון‬

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:36:22 +0000

‫אייקון TLV, הפסטיבל הבינלאומי למדע בדיוני ופנטזיה, נערך מדי שנה בתל אביב בחול המועד סוכות. במסגרת הפסטיבל שייערך השנה, אתן הרצאה על ההיסטוריה של הניסויים הקליניים, נושא שהיה בבחינת מדע בדיוני בהיסטוריה הלא ממש רחוקה שלנו. ההרצאה תתבסס על הרצאה "מהלימון ועד הקופקסון" שנתתי לפני כחצי שנה, אולם ההדגשים יהיו שונים, בהתאם לקהל היעד. פרטים [...]‬

The SAS Dummy: Hey, I'm still here!

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 04:04:02 +0000

Today's Australian news journal features an article about how Dr. Jim Goodnight swept into Australia for the SAS Forum event, delivered his remarks and pressed a few palms, and then was on his way back home -- according to the article -- on the very same day.

That's not exactly how it happened. I mean, Dr. Goodnight did come into town for the event, but he stayed around until the next day to meet with the talented and proud SAS staff who maintain SAS' presence in the area. The trip to Australia was a special stop along a busy tour that included the Premier Business Leadership Series in Hong Kong, among other places.

And of course, I've been here for over a week as a delegate from SAS R&D, visiting with SAS customers in the region. I'm not as sought after as Dr. Goodnight, but I hope I'm not exactly chopped liver either. I'm looking forward to just a bit more time over here to continue my tour, spreading the word about what we're working on within SAS development and gathering feedback and ideas from our Down Under customers.

Key Happenings at support.sas.com: SAS Tech Report Reader’s Survey Uncovers Interesting Questions

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:21:00 +0000

Although I’ve only been with SAS for a little more than two years, I’ve made many SAS friends and I’m beginning to feel a part of the SAS user family. But as the editor of the SAS Tech Report, I really wanted to validate some of my assumptions about reader preferences: I’d made those assumptions based upon reader metrics and conversations I’ve had while at conferences and in online arenas including Twitter and e-mail. I thought it was time to float a short survey.
Continue reading "SAS Tech Report Reader’s Survey Uncovers Interesting Questions"

Sacramento Valley SAS Users Group: Register for WUSS 2010

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 13:47:34 +0000

Registration is now open for the annual meeting of theWestern Users of SAS Software.Date: November 3-5Place: San Diego, CAThis is a great opportunity to talk with SAS developers and network with other SAS users in a friendly setting.Click here for rates and registration information.Have you been using SAS for less than 3 years? If so, then you may be eligible for a Junior Professional Award which

The SAS Dummy: Australia: more than just a day ahead

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 07:22:51 +0000

It's been a very busy week for me here in Sydney, Australia. For starters, I led a two-day course about SAS Enterprise Guide for experienced SAS users. We used SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3, which is just about to ship from SAS. I told my students that they were the first SAS customers to actually lay their hands on this new version of the software. It's just another example of why left-of-the-dateline Australia's slogan should be something like, "Australia: we thrive in Tomorrow while you wallow in Yesterday."

On Thursday, we held SAS Forum in Sydney. There were lots of great high-level and technical sessions, including a hands-on workshop with SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3, led by SAS Education staff from Australia. It was another great chance for dozens of customers to play with the new programming features that are built into the latest release.

Personally, I was extremely impressed by the caliber of the attendees at SAS Forum. There were 1200 of them, which was full capacity, and they were some smart Aussies and Kiwis. SAS sponsored an "innovation wall" where folks could post their ideas for solving real-world problems with SAS. An iPad was offered for the best idea, so folks were motivated to share. And they did post some really great ideas.

The morning "plenary" session was hosted by newsman Tony Jones, who I'd never seen before but who appears to be the Jim Lehrer of Australia. He hosted a panel discussion with some heavy hitter CEOs, directors, and other business leaders from the region, along with Dr. Jim Goodnight. It was very well done; I felt like I was watching a Sunday morning news show.

In the coming week I'll continue my tour of the region, visiting with lots of SAS customers in Melbourne, Canberra, and New Zealand. It's a hectic pace, but I'm enjoying it...knowing that I'll be back home at my desk soon enough. Back in the land of Yesterday, where Tomorrow is still a day away.

Key Happenings at support.sas.com: Making Sense of Twitter with SAS

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 10:46:15 +0000

Last year, Richard Foley and Zack Marshall offered up the idea of calling Twitter from SAS right here in this blog. It was a really popular post. When I saw SAS and Twitter–how to harness SAS to grab data from Twitter in 2 easy steps by John Munoz, I knew I had to share it with you.

My favorite line in the post is "But Twitter returns a paltry 100 results at a time. You’re a SAS user, you don’t work with 100 record data sets! "

People use SAS to do so many ordinary and extraordinary things. John's post is just one example of that. I'll keep an eye out for others. If you find them before I do, please share them with me and other SAS users.

Open Mic: Close to Publication

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 18:37:48 +0000

Contributed by Rick Wicklin, Research Statistician Developer, SAS

I just returned home from Vancouver, British Columbia, where I attended the 2010 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM). I heard that more than 5,300 statisticians attended this year, including about 40 or so from SAS. I stayed busy. I gave a presentation on techniques for visualizing time series, gave a two-hour workshop on SAS/IML® Studio, took a continuing education course, and attended many talks on statistics.

While there, I ran into Julie Platt at the SAS Press booth. She told me that many people browsed the draft copy of my book, Statistical Programming with SAS/IML Software, and asked when it would be available. I was surprised (though pleased) by the advance interest. The next day, several people at my workshop also inquired as to the book’s availability. One gentleman told me that he’s “been looking for years to find a good book on IML.”

Well, I’m pleased to announce that the manuscript is complete and is undergoing a final copyedit. It looks like it is on track for publication in Fall 2010, which is not far away! Finally, 16 months of planning, programming, and writing are almost complete. The book contains hundreds of examples and more than 120 graphs. I think it has something for everyone: from the DATA step programmer who wants to begin learning PROC IML, to the experienced IML programmer who wants to learn to write programs more efficiently, to the SAS/STAT programmer who wants to learn about how to use SAS/IML Studio to augment his statistical data analyses.

There’s only one problem left to resolve: after the book is finished I’m not sure what I’m going to do with myself every morning. I’ve conditioned myself to get up early and write for 90 minutes before breakfast. I suppose I’ll need to find another hobby. Maybe a blog?

SAS Programming: Table Look Up in SAS, practical problems

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:14:21 +0000

One guy asked in a SAS forum about a typical table look up problem:
He has a data with two IDs:
id1 id2
a b
a e
b c
b e
c e
d e

and he wants to generate a new data set with the following structure according to above information :
id a b c d e
a 0 1 0 0 1
b 1 0 1 0 1
c 0 1 0 0 1
d 0 0 0 0 1
e 1 1 1 1 0

The real data is potentially big.
***************************;
At first look, this is a typical table look up problem SAS programmers facing almost everyday, that is duplicate keyed lookup table. It is a simple one because there is no inherent relationship among records.


data original;
   input id1 $ id2 $;
datalines;
a b
a e
b c
b e
c e
d e
;
run;

proc datasets library=work nolist;
     modify original;
  index create id1 id2;
quit;

proc sql;
     create table all_cases as
  select a.*, monotonic() as seq
  from (
  select distinct id1 as id
  from original
  union
  select distinct id2 as id
  from original
  ) as a
  order by a.id
  ;
quit;

proc sql noprint;
     select id into :idnames separated by ' '
  from   all_cases
  ;
quit;

data new;
  if _n_=1 then do;
     declare hash _h(dataset:'all_cases');
     _h.defineKey('id');
     _h.defineData('seq');
     _h.defineDone();
     end; 
     set all_cases;

  array _a{*} &idnames 

  id1=id;  
  set original key=id1;      
  _mx_=%sysrc(_sok);
  
  do while (_iorc_=%sysrc(_sok));   
     rc=_h.find(key:id2); if rc=0 then _a[seq]=1;
  id1=id;
     set original key=id1;  
  
  end;
  _ERROR_=0;
  
  id2=id;  
  set original key=id2;      
  do while (_iorc_=%sysrc(_sok)); 
     rc=_h.find(key:id1); if rc=0 then _a[seq]=1;
  id2=id;
     set original key=id2;  
  end;
  _ERROR_=0;
  do j=1 to dim(_a); _a[j]=max(0, _a[j]); end;
  keep id &idnames
run;

On the other hand, this problem can be solved in a more SASsy way like this:


data original;
   input id1 $ id2 $;
datalines;
a b
a e
b c
b e
c e
d e
;
run;

proc sql;
     create table newx as
     select a.id1, a.id2, (sum(a.id1=c.id1 & a.id2=c.id2)>0) as count
     from   
       (select a.id as id1, b.id as id2 
        from all_cases as a, all_cases as b) as a
left join   original as c
       on   a.id1=c.id1 or a.id2=c.id1
    group by a.id1, a.id2
    ;
quit;

proc transpose data=newx  out=_freq_t name=id2;
     by id1;
     var count;
     id id2;
run;

data _freq_t;
     set _freq_t;
     array _n{*} _numeric_;
     do i=1 to dim(_n);
        _n[i]=(_n[i]>0);
     end;
     drop i;
run;

proc transpose data=_freq_t(drop=id2) out=_freq_t2  name=id1;
     id id1;
run;

proc sql noprint;
     select id1, count(distinct id1) into :covars separated by ' ', :count
     from   _freq_t;  
quit;

data new2;
     set _freq_t;
     array _x{*} &covars
     array _x2{&count} _temporary_;

     do j=1 to &count _x2[j]=_x[j]; end;
     set _freq_t2;
     do j=1 to &count _x[j]=(_x[j]+_x2[j]>0); end;
     drop j id2;
run;

SAS Programming: SAS implementation of Kernel PCA

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:11:13 +0000

Kernel method is a very useful technique in data mining that is applicable to any algorithms relying on inner product [1]. The key is applying appropriate kernel function to the inner product of original data space.

I show here SAS/STAT+BASE example code for Kernel PCA implementation. The example used is from Wikipedia @ here. Extention to other algorithms that suitable for Kernel method, such as CCA, ICA, LDA, etc, is straightforward.

Reference:
[1]. Zhu, Mu, "Kernels and Ensembles: Perspectives on Statistical Learning", The American Statistician. May 1, 2008, 62(2): 97-109

Figure: Result

SAS demo code:


/* Demonstrate kernel PCA. Kernel method can be applied to any algorithm that 
   relies on inner product */
data original;
     do ID=-314 to 314;
        x1=sin(ID/100)*1+rannor(8976565)*0.1; 
        x2=cos(ID/100)*1+rannor(92654782)*0.1; 
        Class=1; output;
        x1=sin(ID/100)*2+rannor(8976565)*0.1;
        x2=cos(ID/100)*2+rannor(92654782)*0.1; 
        Class=2; output;
        x1=sin(ID/100)*3+rannor(8976565)*0.1; 
        x2=cos(ID/100)*3+rannor(92654782)*0.1; 
        Class=3; output;
     end;
run;

/*------------ Linear PCA -----------*/
proc princomp data=original  standard noint cov 
              outstat=lin_stat(where=(_TYPE_ = 'USCORE'))
              noprint;
        var x1 x2;
run;

data lin_stat_score;
     set lin_stat;
     _TYPE_= 'PARMS';
run;

proc score data=original   score=lin_stat_score  type=parms   out=lin_pca;
     var x1 x2;
run;

/*--------- Kernel PCA 1.0 ------------*/
/* Inner product based kernel PCA */
proc transpose data=original(drop=ID  Class) out=original_t; run;

proc corr data=original_t 
          outp=inner(where=(_TYPE_='SSCP' & substr(_NAME_, 1, 3)='COL') 
                     drop=intercept)  
          sscp noprint;
     var col:;
run;

/* apply kernel functon to inner product matrix. Here we use (X'Y+1)^2, the 
   one used in wikipedia.org example. */
data inner;
     set inner;
     array _C{*} _numeric_;
     _TYPE_='COV';
     do j=1 to dim(_C); _C[j]=(_C[j]+1)**2; end;
     drop j;
run;

proc princomp data=inner    noint  cov  standard
              outstat=k_stat(where=(_TYPE_ in ('EIGENVAL', 'USCORE')) )
              noprint;
     var col:;
run;

data S(drop=_NAME_)  score;
     set k_stat;
     if _TYPE_='EIGENVAL' then output S; else output score;
     drop _TYPE_;
run;

data _null_;
     set S;
     array _S{*} _numeric_;
     do j=1 to dim(_S);
        if _S[j]<0.5*constant('MACEPS') then do;
          call symput('maxsingval', j-1); stop;
        end;
     end;
run;
%put &maxsingval;

data score; 
     set score; if _n_>&maxsingval then delete; retain _TYPE_ 'PARMS';  
run;

proc score data=inner   score=score  type=parms  out=k_U(keep=Prin:);
        var col:;
run;

data k_U;
     set original(keep=ID Class  x1 x2)  ;
     set k_U;
run;

/*
proc gplot data=k_U;
     plot Prin1*Prin2=Class;
run;quit;
*/

/*--------- Kernel PCA 2.0------------*/
/* Frobenius norm based kernel PCA */
proc transpose data=original(drop=ID  Class) out=original_t; run;

proc corr data=original_t  
          outp=inner2(where=(_TYPE_='SSCP' & substr(_NAME_, 1, 3)='COL')  
                      drop=intercept)  
          sscp noprint;
     var col:;
run;

proc means data=original_t noprint ;
         var col:;
         output out=_uss2(drop=_TYPE_    _FREQ_)    uss= /autoname;
run;

proc transpose data=_uss2  out=_uss2t; run;

proc sql noprint;
          select nobs into :NCOLS from sashelp.vtable
          where libname='WORK'
              and memtype='DATA'
              and memname='_USS2T'
              ;
quit;
%let ncols=%sysfunc(compress(&NCOLS));
%put &ncols;

/* apply kernel functon to inner product matrix. Here we use Gaussian kernel function. */
%let sigma=1;
data inner2;
          array _X{&ncols} COL1-COL&ncols;
          array _USS0{&ncols}  _temporary_;
          if _n_=1 then do;
             do j=1 to &ncols;
                  set  _uss2t(keep=COL1)  point=j;
                  _USS0[j]=COL1;
             end;
          end;
          set inner2;
          _TYPE_='COV';
          do j=1 to &ncols;
              _X[j]=_USS0[_n_] + _USS0[j] - 2*_X[j];
              _X[j]=exp(-0.5*_X[j]/σ);
          end;
          keep _TYPE_  _NAME_ COL1-COL&ncols;
run;


proc princomp data=inner2    noint  cov  standard
              outstat=k_stat2(where=(_TYPE_ in ('EIGENVAL', 'USCORE')) )
              noprint;
     var col:;
run;

data S2(drop=_NAME_)  score2;
     set k_stat2;
     if _TYPE_='EIGENVAL' then output S2; else output score2;
     drop _TYPE_;
run;

data _null_;
     set S2;
     array _S{*} _numeric_;
     do j=1 to dim(_S);
        if _S[j]<0.5*constant('MACEPS') then do;
          call symput('maxsingval', j-1); stop;
        end;
     end;
run;
%put &maxsingval;

data score2; 
     set score2; if _n_>&maxsingval then delete; retain _TYPE_ 'PARMS';  
run;

proc score data=inner2   score=score2  type=parms  out=k_U2(keep=Prin:);
        var col:;
run;

data k_U2;
     set original(keep=ID Class  x1 x2)  ;
     set k_U2;
run;

/*@ Draw figure using R @*/

%macro RScript(Rscript);
data _null_;
     file "&Rscript";
     infile cards ;
     input;
     put _infile_;
%mend;

 
%macro CallR(Rscript, Rlog);
systask command "D:\Progra~1\Analyt~1\R\bin\R.exe CMD BATCH --vanilla --quiet 
                 &Rscript  &Rlog"   taskname=rjob1  wait  status=rjobstatus1;
%mend;

options nosource;
proc export data=original   outfile="c:\o.csv"  dbms=csv; run;
proc export data=lin_PCA    outfile="c:\a.csv"  dbms=csv; run;
proc export data=k_U       outfile="c:\b.csv"  dbms=csv; run;
proc export data=k_U2     outfile="c:\c.csv"   dbms=csv; run;
options source;

%RScript(c:\rscript.r)
cards;
odsn <- read.csv('c:/o.csv', header=T)
adsn <- read.csv('c:/a.csv', header=T)
bdsn <- read.csv('c:/b.csv', header=T)
cdsn <- read.csv('c:/c.csv', header=T)
png(file='c:/figure.png')
par(mfcol=c(2,2), mar=c(4,4,3,2))
plot(x1~x2, data=odsn, col=Class, main='Original')
plot(Prin1~Prin2, data=adsn, col=Class, main='Linear PCA')
plot(Prin1~Prin2, data=bdsn, col=Class, main='Polynomial Kernel')
plot(Prin1~Prin2, data=cdsn, col=Class, main='Gauss Kernal')
dev.off()
;
run;

%CallR(c:\rscript.r, c:\rlog1.txt);

Further Reading:
Chapter 1 & 2 of
Principal Manifolds for Data Visualization and Dimension Reduction by A. Gorban, B. Kegl, D. Wunsch, A. Zinovyev (Eds.) Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering, Springer 2007

Becoming a SAS Programmer in Pharmaceutical

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:00:35 +0000

Just finished paper on running SAS stored process and macros on BlackBerry. Do I need encryption from RIM? :) http://bit.ly/9h7KWF

The SAS Training Post: How a SAS Training Course is Made - Part 1

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:44:00 +0000

Editor’s Note: Meet Rick Cornell, SAS Training Course Development Manager. In a multi-part series, Rick will tell us about how a SAS training course is born. In this first installment, learn where a course comes from, what new courses are in the works and Rick’s desert island list of albums.

1) Describe your job at SAS.

I’m the manager of the group that supports course developers and maintains the course development process. The group consists of project managers, editors, and production specialists. I’m an editor by trade (after an earlier life as a middle school teacher), and I still spend a great deal of my time editing course materials.

2) Where do the ideas come from for creating a new SAS training course? An instructor? A customer? From software development or product management; to support a new software product?

Let’s see: yes, yes, and yes. And several more yeses. Ideas come from all over: product managers in R&D or Sales & Marketing; student comments during classes or customer requests at user group events; instructors in Education; country managers in Europe and beyond; industry experts outside of SAS for the Business Knowledge Series program; and elsewhere. If my friend Tom Baker in the RFC (SAS’ Recreation and Fitness Center for employees) has an idea for a course, we’d love to hear it.

3) Is there one particular course development project that stands out in your mind?

That’s a tough one. It feels like all courses have their own quirks and personalities – and you love some courses because of those things, and some, well, you don’t love so much because of those things. The foundation course revision efforts for both SAS 9 and 9.2 both stand out just because there were so many people involved and they were such huge undertakings. The larger the project and the more people who are involved, the more crucial the role of a support team is. I’d have a much better answer if you asked me my all-time top ten favorite albums.

Continue reading "How a SAS Training Course is Made - Part 1"

Key Happenings at support.sas.com: Did you know ... you can add comments to your SAS books?

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:50:02 +0000

I just learned today that you can add comments to your saved copies of the SAS 9.2 documentation. How cool is that! I'm not sure how I missed this news; I don't want you to miss it too.

Starting with SAS 9.2, the PDF versions of SAS documentation allow you to use the Comment & Markup feature of Adobe Reader to make notes in a local copy of the document. This sure beats keeping a printed copy on your desk with sticky notes and pencil scrawls all over it.

For those of you who have never used the comment feature, I have provided short instructions below. I verified these instructions using Adobe Reader 9.

Find the document that you need. (I suggest using the documentation by product listing at support.sas.com/documentation to easily locate available PDF files.)

Select the PDF link for your selected document and save the file to your local file system.

Open the saved PDF document. Find a spot to add a comment, a sticky, or to highlight a few words.

Select Tools from the Comment & Markup pull-down.

Use one of the markup elements to add something to your document. I chose to add a sticky note that included a URL for more information about the topic. The image below shows the document text with the sticky note indicator where I placed it.

You can locate all of your comments when you return to the document by selecting the Comment element in the toolbar. Adobe Reader provides a complete set of tools for managing and using the elements that you added to the document. The next image shows part of the entry for my sticky note.

When I click the yellow note icon, I am taken to the location in the document that contains my note. How cool is that!

The SAS Dummy: Talking in my sleep

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:20:39 +0000

I've completed my first day of teaching a two-day course about SAS Enterprise Guide. I'm in Sydney, Australia...but my biological clock is still tuned into Cary, North Carolina time. I woke up at 1 a.m. today and even though I tried to convince my body that it was still time for sleep, my body remained convinced that it was midday, and thus refused to comply.

Despite my lack of sleep, I managed to muster enough energy to propel me through the day. (Caffeine helped. A lot.) I've enjoyed meeting the students, who make up an interesting cross-section of SAS customers that are based here in the region. They work for banks, telecom companies, and government agencies. They all have different uses for SAS, of course, and yet they are probably more alike than they are different in their need to access data, produce and run SAS programs, and manage their work in an efficient way.

Tomorrow we'll finish up the course, and then on Thursday we'll all attend the big SAS Forum day here in Sydney. It's a sold-out event, with over 1200 SAS customers registered to attend.

It's going to be a busy time. I'd better get some sleep!

The Princess of Science: ‫כמה מצלמות אבטחה יש בבריטניה?‬

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 07:59:31 +0000

‫הנושא ישן (כפי שהתברר לי). הגעתי אליו משני כיוונים שונים. במגזין כלכליסט מהשבוע שעבר הובא ראיון עם נביא זעם בשם ג'ון קמפנר, שדן ב-"עיסקה הפופולרית בעולם", לדבריו, "במסגרתה אנחנו מוכרים את כל החירויות שלנו רק כדי לשמור על החופש להרוויח". דבריו של קמפנר אכן מעוררים מחשבה, וראויים לדיון נפרד, אבל אני רוצה להטפל רק לדוגמא [...]‬

Open Mic: Reach for the stars

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:05:15 +0000

Contributed by Christine Kjellberg, Marketing Specialist, SAS Publishing

"Goals are dreams with deadlines."
Diana Scharf Hunt

If you had told me a year ago at this time that I was would be training for triathlons and studying for the Base SAS Certification test, I probably would have said you’re crazy. But, late last summer a good friend of mine convinced me to do my first sprint distance triathlon. I skeptically agreed thinking that the worst case would be I’d have to walk part of the 5K run. So, early that morning I packed up my suit, mountain bike, running shoes and headed out to do my first triathlon. From the moment I finished, I knew I was hooked! At the beginning of this year I set a goal of doing my first Olympic distance triathlon – 1.5K swim, 40K bike, 10K run – and have been training and practicing different techniques at the four races I’ve done before the “big one” in two weeks. I’m learning what works and, more importantly, what doesn’t work as I go and I think I’ve got a good plan for the end of this month. As a study group preparing for the Certification test in October, we are also learning what works to help us prepare for the test.

SAS Self-paced eLearning has become something our study group of three has been using to practice concepts learned in our Certification Guide. These courses not only include in-depth content information, but each section includes practices and a quiz at the end to test your knowledge. And, you can access the most of the e-Learning courses for a year so you can brush up on anything you may have forgotten. For those of you who are looking to become either Base or Advanced SAS Certified, there is a 50-question practice exam for each of these exams. You can access the practice exams as often as you want during the 180-day license period, but the questions do remain the same. Our plan is to take the practice exam as soon as we’ve finished all the chapters in the Certification Prep Guide and completed the practices in the self-paced e-Learning.

Our topic this week was on arrays. Both the Certification Prep Guide and the self-paced e-Learning (Programming II: Data Manipulation Techniques) dedicate chapters to learning arrays. While I won’t say that we breezed through this topic, we did manage to work through all the e-Learning problems and arrive at the correct answers. However, we were stumped by one question in the e-Learning that we did not see addressed in either the book or online. The part we found confusing was the $ 2 temporary in answers B and C below, and why it was being used. We’re still looking for the answer and would love an explanation if you happen to know.

So, now that you know my two biggest personal and professional goals of 2010, what are your goals? Whatever they might be, stay focused, practice and I wish you well on your journey and hope that you reach them.

"Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road."
Dag Hammarskjold

Becoming a SAS Programmer in Pharmaceutical

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:56:43 +0000

800 employees can now access information from a SAS Institute Inc. BI system via their phones as analysts pontificates http://bit.ly/b2ASBT

Sacramento Valley SAS Users Group: Full-Day Meeting of the Sacramento Valley SAS Users Group

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 22:14:53 +0000

Date: Thursday, September 23, 2010Place: OTech Training and Event Center, 9323 Tech Center Drive, Sacramento, CA 95826See map.Don't miss this all-day meeting featuring in-depth presentations by SAS Institute and local experts. This free event offers users at all experience levels opportunities to increase their proficiency with core SAS data analysis, reporting and management capabilities, as

The Princess of Science: ‫ואנקובר – סיכום הכנס‬

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 05:59:02 +0000

‫הכנס נגמר היום (כאן עדיין יום חמישי), ורגע לפני הטיסה חזרה לארץ, הנה סיכום של הצד המקצועי של הכנס. יום ראשון היום הזה היה אמור להיות מוקדש כולו לקורס בכריית נתונים (data mining). הקורס היה מאכזב מאוד. שלושת המרצים עברו על השקפים שהכינו במהירות הבזק, אבל גרוע מכך – לא ממש תרמו לידע שלי. הם [...]‬

The SAS Training Post: No Oompa-Loompas here: e-Learning wins top honors

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:54:00 +0000

If repeats are sweet, then the SAS Education e-Learning Technology team is running on a sugar high that would make Willy Wonka (and my young daughters) envious. Not only did it just earn honors from the Society for Technical Communication’s (STC) international competition for the second consecutive year; it took home the highest accolade possible: an Award of Distinguished Technical Communication, for the multimedia e-course SAS Programming 2: Data Manipulation Techniques.

In the e-learning world, that feat is like chasing an ice cream sundae with chocolate cake and a hearty sampling of sugar-coated Saturday-morning breakfast cereal. It doesn’t get much sweeter. The STC, a membership organization that dedicates itself to advancing the arts and sciences of technical communication, is the largest group of its kind in the world.

Last year, the e-course SAS Programming Introduction: Basic Concepts won STC’s Excellence Award, proving, as Vice President for Education Larry Stewart commented, that the e-learning team “continues to set the bar high for this type of technical communication.”

Translating the engaging style of a traditional classroom instructor to electronic form is certainly no easy task, but SAS Instructional Technology Manager Nancy Goodyear’s group designed an effective way to transport color, verve and functionality to even the grayest of cubicles with a dynamic computer course that uses audio, Flash movie and demos to present the training. STC judges were particularly impressed with the course’s “exceptional” organization and navigation and its ability to engage the learner through interactive questions, practices and quizzes.

Do you need more proof that the SAS e-Learning team is the cream of the crop? Nope, probably not. But here’s the cherry on top, all the same: To advance to the international competition, the course first had to distinguish itself from all other entries in the remarkably challenging STC Carolina Chapter Online Competition – which includes many Research Triangle Park peers. It did, winning top honors and Best of Show there.

Goodyear said we can expect more new e-courses in the near future, and that’s (dare we say it?) sweet news for SAS users who love the convenience of e-Learning. Have you taken a SAS e-course recently? Tell us what you liked about it.

platformadmin.com: Inheritance Paths

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:44:50 +0000

This is another companion post for my Best Practices with SAS® 9 Metadata Security presentation at next week’s SAS Forum Australia & New Zealand 2010 to expand a little on the concept of Inheritance Paths.

Importance of Inheritance Paths

Inheritance paths play a key role in SAS metadata security, providing a mechanism whereby objects can inherit some, or all, of their access controls from other objects. They provide a foundation for the development of an efficient security plan that meets security requirements with a minimum of access controls and ongoing maintenance.

When determining whether a user has been granted or denied a permission on an object in metadata (such as the ability to update an information map with a grant of the WriteMetadata permission), the SAS metadata server will first look to see if the object has any relevant direct access controls applied to it. If there are no relevant direct access controls on the object in question, then the grant or denial of the permission will be derived from the object’s inheritance paths instead. The inheritance paths consist of the objects parents, its parent’s parents and so on.

In any given metadata repository the vast majority of metadata objects will not have any direct access controls applied to them. Almost all metadata permission determinations will be made from inheritance paths. This is a good thing. Inheritance paths mean we can set a small number of key access controls in a few strategic locations high up in inheritance paths, such as high level tree folders or application servers, and rely on inheritance to propagate those permissions to the majority of objects lower down in the inheritance path.

The structure and content of an object’s inheritance paths will depend on the type of metadata object in question (as well as the version of SAS you are using – more on that in a moment). The SAS documentation provides more information on the specifics but it is often easier to use the SAS Management Console Inheritance tab when looking at specific objects.

With SAS 9.1.3 we used to have to work most of this out in our head. Things are much easier now with SAS 9.2 thanks to all the new metadata security goodies, such as the SAS Management Console Explore Authorizations and Inheritance tabs, but it is still important for a platform administrator to have a good understanding of inheritance paths. Whilst you may be able to find out that Susan has been granted WriteMetadata on the Current Sales Forecast information map through an inherited access control, it is an understanding of inheritance paths that helps you find the underlying source of that grant. A knowledge of inheritance paths is also key to planning a good metadata security plan as well as understanding the impact of any changes that are made.

Visualizing Inheritance Paths

An object’s inheritance paths can be easily viewed using the SAS Management Console Inheritance tab. This is a standard feature in SAS 9.2 and available as a downloadable plug-in for SAS 9.1.3.

When using SAS Management Console 9.2 you can access the Inheritance tab from an object’s properties dialog by using the Advanced button on the Authorization tab. The following is an example of the Inheritance tab in SAS 9.2 for a table named CUSTOMERS showing the single inheritance path consisting of the hierarchy of folders it is contained in. The tree path for this table is /SAS Folders/Shared Data/Sales Data/CUSTOMERS which can be seen in reverse in the Inheritance tab.

Whilst the Inheritance tab is not included in a standard installation of SAS Management Console 9.1, it can be easily added by downloading and installing the plug-in from the support.sas.com site. You can find the 913INHERITANCETAB01 download together with installation instructions in the SAS BI Administration Utilities 9.1.3 area.

Once installed in SAS Management Console 9.1, as shown in the screenshot below, the Inheritance tab can be seen directly in the properties dialog for an object (i.e. alongside the Authorization tab). You may notice that this is in a different location than with SAS 9.2 (where it is accessed from a button within the Authorization tab).

This additional feature is also described in SAS Usage Note 20960: The authorization inheritance utility is now available for the SAS® Management Console. As mentioned in the usage note, it is easier to view the inheritance path if the Show Association Node checkbox is unchecked (as I have done below). It must be manually unchecked with SAS Management Console 9.1, but is unchecked by default in SAS Management Console 9.2.

The example above shows the CUSTOMERS table in a SAS 9.1.3 installation where the table can be found in the tree folder /Shared Data/Sales Data and associated with the Sales library assigned to the SASMain application server.

You may have noticed that there are multiple inheritance paths for this table in a SAS 9.1.3 installation, whereas there was only one inheritance path in the SAS 9.2 installation…

Multiple Inheritance in SAS 9.1.3 vs Single Inheritance in SAS 9.2

As shown in the examples above, SAS 9.1.3 had a few instances of multiple inheritance where an object could have multiple parents and therefore multiple inheritance paths. The CUSTOMERS table shown above for SAS 9.1.3 has two direct parents: both the Sales Data tree folder, and the Sales library. This multiple parentage resulted in some confusion among platform administrators. Whilst the access decision flow handled the potential for conflict, it did so in a way that caused some often unexpected outcomes where a permission may have been granted when the administrator expected it to have been denied. When I say ‘unexpected’ I mean from the perspective of a platform administrator who is not aware of the rules – it is totally expected when considering the access decision flow I have a follow-up post planned that discusses this potential issue and the associated practice of consistently securing all inheritance paths

These are some of the metadata objects I am aware of that have multiple inheritance in SAS 9.1.3:

DBMS Schema: inherits from both DBMS Server and Library (as documented in the SAS® 9.1.3 Intelligence Platform Security Administration Guide)
Table: inherits from both Library and Tree folder
OLAP Cube: inherits from both OLAP Schema and Tree folder
Deployed Job: inherits from both Job and Tree folder

… if you know of any others, please let me know and I will add them to this list. From what I can see the SAS 9.1.3 Security Administration Guide for SAS 9.1.3 only covers the DBMS Schema instance. It does not mention the OLAP Cube and Table instances which are also commonly encountered.

One of the significant metadata security changes in SAS 9.2 was the virtual elimination of multiple inheritance. Tables and OLAP Cubes, for example, now have single inheritance paths in SAS 9.2 and only inherit from folders.

I say virtual elimination in SAS 9.2 only to be safe because, although I have yet to discover any metadata objects types in SAS 9.2 that do have multiple inheritance, the access decision flow still handles multiple inheritance scenarios and the documentation stills refers to the potential for multiple inheritance. The SAS® 9.2 Intelligence Platform Security Administration Guide, Chapter 5 Authorization Model section titled Authorization Decisions states that “A grant from any inheritance path can provide access.” and “Having more than one immediate parent is not a common circumstance.”, but it does not provide any concrete examples.

If you are reading this and you do know of any multiple inheritance examples in SAS 9.2 then I would be very keen to hear from you

Learning more about Inheritance Paths

If you want to lean more about this topic, I would suggest any or all of the following:

Attend the SAS training course SAS Platform Administration: Fast Track.
Read the SAS® 9.2 Intelligence Platform Security Administration Guide, Chapter 5 Authorization Model, specifically the section titled Inheritance Paths
Read the SAS® 9.1.3 Intelligence Platform Security Administration Guide, Second Edition, Chapter 2 Understanding Authorization, specifically the section titled Where Can Permissions Be Set?

The Princess of Science: ‫דש מואנקובר‬

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 05:26:55 +0000

‫למי שלא יודע, השבוע אני נמצא בואנקובר, קנדה, לרגל ה-Joint Statistical Meetings, הכנס המשותף לשישה ארגוני סטטיסטיקאים הנערך מדי שנה בשבוע הראשון של חודש אוגוסט, באחת מערי צפון אמריקה. חזרתי לכנס הזה אחרי 10 שנים שלא השתתפתי בו (כי העדפתי להגיע לכנסים קטנים יותר), ובסך הכל מדובר בחוויה. על האספקטים המקצועיים של הכנס אכתוב ברשימה [...]‬

The SAS Dummy: A winter term at Hemedinger U.

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:53:00 +0000

I received this offer in the post the other day: "University apparel just for you, featuring the name HEMEDINGER!"

Yes, the offer has it correct. This would be just for me, because I can't think of anyone else who might order it.

I regret that I didn't receive the offer soon enough to order a set for the students that I'll have next week. I'm travelling down to Sydney, Australia to teach a two-day course titled, "SAS Enterprise Guide for Experienced SAS Users: An Insider's Perspective." I'm really looking forward to leading the course. (To be honest, I'm really looking forward to visiting Australia; teaching the course is a bonus.)

The course is a mash-up of a few offerings: SAS Enterprise Guide for Experienced SAS Programmers, SAS For Dummies topics, and my own secret sauce of topics that I know about from my vantage point in SAS R&D.

It's winter in Australia, but I know that I'll stay plenty warm because, while I'm down there, I'll never stop moving. In addition to the course, I'll attend SAS Forum Australia and New Zealand 2010. And in the days that follow I'll have a chance to visit customers throughout Australia and even into New Zealand.

I'm looking forward to meeting my colleagues and customers from Down Under. If you attend SAS Forum ANZ and you happen to see me there, perhaps looking a bit dazed from jet lag, please make a point of saying hello.