SAS LA Forum Abstracts
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2010 Invited Speakers
Business Intelligence 2.0: Are we there yet? (Click here for SAS Global Forum 2010 Paper)
Gregory S. Nelson, ThotWave Technologies
Business intelligence (BI) has been with us for years now, and, we would argue, not much has changed. Advances in the consumer communications and the entertainment world have dwarfed commercial software applications. Consumers have unprecedented access to information and tools with which to consume information. Social media, mobile access, augmented reality and 3D views of pictures and video have blurred the lines between our private and work personas and have fundamentally changed the way the consumer utilizes information. Conversely, BI has seemed to lack in any real innovation.
In this paper, we will outline what the next chapter of innovation should contain for business intelligence, analytics and data integration. Some hints of these features exist today, while others have lagged behind as the industry has endured a number of mergers and acquisitions. The vendors that have survived the economic and industry turmoil can now turn from treading water to making waves.
Greg is a certified practitioner with over two decades of broad Business Intelligence and Analytics experience. This has been gained across several life sciences and global healthcare organizations as well as government and academic settings. He has extensive software development life cycle experience and knowledge of clinical informatics and regulatory requirements and has been responsible for the delivery of numerous projects in clinical and business environments. Mr. Nelson holds a B.A. in Psychology and PhD level work in Social Psychology and Quantitative Methods and certifications in project management, six sigma, balanced scorecard and healthcare IT.
Do it yourself: Installing and Troubleshooting Your Own SAS 9.2 System (Click here for SAS LA Forum 2010 Paper)
Heidi Johnson, SAS Institute Inc.
This talk will provide keys to a successful SAS 9.2 installation. It will include troubleshooting tips and practical advice for avoiding pitfalls during the installation and configuration processes. We will also discuss installing and configuring the latest version of SAS Enterprise Miner.
Heidi Johnson is a Technical Support Analyst at SAS. After beginning her career at SAS in 1998, she spent eight years in Information Technology where she held several positions including Analyst/Programmer and Systems Administrator. In these positions, she developed applications using Java Servlet/JSP and SAS. In 2006, she transitioned into her current role as a Technical Support Analyst where she is the team lead for installation and configuration of SAS Enterprise Miner and SAS Model Manager on both the Windows and UNIX platforms. As a part of this role, she has had the opportunity to travel to customer sites and SAS User Groups. Whether answering the phone in Cary or travelling to a customer site, she especially enjoys meeting SAS customers and devising innovative ways to help them solve problems.
SAS® MACRO: Beyond the Basics (Click here for SAS Global Forum 2008 Paper)
Stephen Philp, Pelican Programming
The SAS® macro facility has been an essential part of the SAS programmer’s toolkit for many years. Its continued use is a testament to its relevance and power. With each new release of SAS® software, macros continue to be arguably the easiest way to create data-driven code generation. The intended audience for this paper includes any SAS programmer who writes macros or works with macros that are written by others. The following topics will be discussed: • Review of macro timing • the %SYSFUNC macro function (avoiding the DATA step) • macro expressions • global and local symbol tables • debugging • creating and using macro libraries
Stephen Philp is a SAS programmer living in Redondo Beach. He has been using SAS for over 10 years. Through his career, Stephen has worked primarily as a programmer and also as a SAS instructor. He maintains and writes a SAS programming blog called Data Steps. His day-to-day programming tasks also have him working with .NET, perl, HTML/Javascript and Ruby on Rails.
When not sitting at a computer, Stephen is often at the beach playing volleyball, in the mountains snowboarding or goofing off with kids.
“LAG With a WHERE” and Other DATA Step Stories (Click here for Paper)
Neil Howard, Amgen, Inc.
This tutorial illustrates the importance of understanding the internals of DATA step processing, particularly when you invoke functions such as LAG, code RETAIN statements, rely on WHERE constructs, and start combining various features of the DATA step language and performing conditional execution of certain functions. This anthology includes such spellbinding stories as:
- “LAG With a WHERE”,
- “To LAG or to LEAD”,
- “A DIFferent LAG”,
- “When RETAIN Doesn’t Retain”,
- “Don’t Order My Variables Around”, and
- "The Case of the Missing Values”.
Neil Howard is Director of Biostatistical Programming at Amgen in Thousand Oaks. She has been a SAS user for over 25 years and was a contract instructor for SAS for 7 years, a long time ago! She chaired SUGI 20 in Orlando in 1995 & has been an Executive Board member for SAS Global Forum for 18 years. She has a new white Golden Retriever puppy that is driving her crazy.
An Introduction to Creating Multi-Sheet Microsoft Excel Workbooks the Easy Way with SAS® (Click here for SAS Global Forum 2010 Paper)
Vince DelGobbo, SAS Institute Inc.
Transferring SAS data and analytical results between SAS and Microsoft Excel can be difficult, especially when SAS is not installed on a Windows platform. This talk provides basic information on how to use Base SAS®9 software to create multi-sheet Microsoft Excel workbooks (for Excel versions 2002 and later). You will learn techniques for quickly and easily creating attractive, multi-sheet Excel workbooks that contain your SAS output using the ExcelXP ODS tagset. The techniques that are presented in this talk can be used regardless of the platform on which SAS software is installed. You can even use them on a mainframe! More in-depth information on this topic will also be presented. Additional resources related to this topic are available.
Vince DelGobbo is a Senior Systems Developer in the Web Tools group at SAS. This group is responsible for developing the SAS/IntrNet Application Dispatcher and SAS Stored Processes. He is the developer for the HTML Formatting Tools and the SAS Design-Time Controls, and is developing other new Web- and server-based technologies, as well as integrating SAS output with Microsoft Office. He is also involved in the development of the ExcelXP ODS tagset. Vince has been a SAS Software user since 1982, and joined SAS in 1992.
