Philip Holland

Is your New Year’s Resolution to learn SAS language programming?

Very often New Year’s Resolutions fail because the task is too hard to start, or too expensive to achieve. However, learning SAS language programming in 2026 will be much less expensive by using the free Personal Edition of Altair SLC.

Altair SLC can run more than 90% of all SAS language programs with no alterations, and much more with minor tweaks. Also, unlike SAS OnDemand for Academics (SODA), the Personal Edition of Altair SLC can be used for commercial work and includes some functionality from SAS Viya related to machine learning that is not in SODA, and includes interfaces to R and Python installations, so all 3 programming languages could be used in the same program. While the Personal Edition is not able to access remote data or run in batch mode, which requires a paid-for licence, it can be used with unlimited data.

So, now you can access free software to practice your programming, how do you learn about how to program?

I have published many books about SAS programming, most of which are available as low-cost PDF ebooks. However, I have recently written a book specifically about Altair SLC, which is also available as an ebook and costs just GBP 5.00 to download. It explains what to expect from Altair SLC and how to download it. This appears to be a version-dependent ebook, but, by downloading this ebook from this blog site, you will be able to re-download this ebook for any future edition that is published at no extra cost, so, whenever it is updated, you can download the latest version. This will also apply to the 3 new Altair SLC books that are planned for publication later in 2026.

Good luck with your New Year’s Resolutions!

January’s paperback 30% discounts on Lulu.com will expire on 30 January

Please do not buy these paperbacks from resellers now they have become available, like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., as the resellers over-inflate their prices, but wait for discounted prices for the paperbacks on Lulu.com between the 1st and 30th day of “odd” months (Jan, Mar, May, Jul, Sep and Nov), or download the equivalent ebooks instead (always discounted) from the Book Table, which is where the lowest prices for my paperbacks and ebooks can always be found.

More details can be found at 2nd Edition paperbacks now have 30% discounts on Lulu.com in “odd” months.

You may ask why I am discounting the book prices. I consider the discounted paperbacks on Lulu.com and discounted downloads on this site to be a win-win: you pay a much lower price and I get a higher royalty payment!!

Please support your independent authors and publishers! Thank you.

VIEWS News 80 (2025Q3/Q4) has been published!

VIEWS News issue 80 has now been published.

This newsletter is the home of Foundation SAS and brings you information about making the most of SAS 9 and Altair SLC. This bumper issue includes articles from this year’s August and November issues, which have been combined due to holidays and illness, after my retirement in April 2025, delayed publication until now. This newsletter issue includes 2 articles from LeRoy Bessler about improving time series or trend graphs and vertical bar charts, and I have contributed a Workflow tip from an upcoming book about Altair SLC. My 2nd Editions of my “SAS Programming Experiences” and “Altair SLC” paperbacks are now available on Amazon and other resellers, but please read my article to get copies at the best available prices. As usual I have publicised some SAS-related events for the next few months, and I have also added some more SAS formats, options and functions that you may or may not have come across before, but you might find interesting, and even useful.

If you would like to contribute an article, to re-visit and improve an existing article, or just discuss the possibility of doing so, please feel free to send an email to me at view-uk@hollandnumerics.org.uk or phil@hollandnumerics.org.uk. Publication deadlines are the 14th day of February, May, August and November each year.

To be able to read this and all previous issues you will need to follow these steps:

If you have not already registered on this blog site, go to blog.hollandnumerics.org.uk and register for free membership.
Once successfully registered, click the menu item [Subscriptions for Forums and Features] > [Request access to the VIEWS UK forum] to request free access to the VIEWS UK forum, then add your name and email address to the form before clicking [Send].
On receipt of a request for an existing blog member I will register them for free access to the VIEWS UK forum, and then send them an email to confirm this.
The next time they log onto the blog site they will see VIEWS UK in the forum list, where you will find the latest issue of VIEWS News, forum topics to find the backissues, functions and formats in every published issue, and a tag cloud covering every forum on the site to which you have access, including VIEWS UK and the VIEWS News issues.
They will also be automatically informed of any VIEWS UK updates.

Enjoy!……………..Phil

Converting mySQL database to MariaDB: findings so far…

On 02Nov2025 I was effectively forced to migrate my blog site’s database from mySQL to MariaDB. Fortunately open-source MariaDB is advertised as compatible with mySQL, so all I did during the migration was:

Replace the mySQL database in the blog site Docker container with an empty MariaDB database by creating a new Docker volume for MariaDB.
Start the blog container, restore the WordPress plugins, and restore the most recent database backup. Remember the MariaDB is compatible with mySQL!
Restart the blog container.

I have now been running the blog site with MariaDB for a week, so what have I noticed?

The server is no longer running out of disk space due to frequently created large log files in the database volume (previously mySQL, but now MariaDB). Was there an underlying problem in mySQL?
I had been using MariaDB for my ownCloud database in a separate Docker container, but, now that I am running 2 instances of MariaDB in separate containers, there are NO interactions, even though the same database software is being used by both containers! Note that I could, in future, use different versions if necessary.
MariaDB feels that it is running faster than mySQL, but, while I have no data to prove this, it is no longer creating any log files, so my feeling may not be just subjective.
Not using mySQL means that I am no longer dependent on Oracle support for my databases. Note that I have, for a long time, been using software applications and platforms supported by open-source communities (LibreOffice, WordPress, Linux, Lulu.com, ownCloud, Eclipse, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, GraphViz, and now MariaDB).

November’s paperback 30% discounts on Lulu.com will expire on 30 November

More details can be found at 2nd Edition paperbacks now have 30% discounts on Lulu.com in “odd” months.

Please support your independent authors and publishers! Thank you.

STOP PRESS: Apologies for my blog site not being accessible between 31Oct2025 and early 02Nov2025. The site’s mySQL database became corrupted, so the blog site is now using a more stable and compatible MariaDB database. Fortunately, no data has been lost.

Joy unbounded revisted! My blog server is up, running again and now I hope it is stable! I have reduced my PDF ebook prices for you until 17Oct2025

On Thursday 09 October I reported that a server issue had been resolved. However, overnight a new problem surfaced. This has now been fixed too.

So what was the fault?

[Technical description!] The new problem was already there in the Apache2 configuration, but was previously hidden. While I had limited the number of active and spare tasks, I had not limited the number of clients. This has now been added and normal operations have been restored.

When I reported the original issue I promised that all of my ebook downloads would be discounted, and I always to keep my promises, so until 17Oct2025 there will be a 10% discount on all PDF ebook downloads from this site.

See the Book Table page and search for books with “PDF” in their names.

Enjoy………..Phil

Joy unbounded! My blog server is up, running again and stable! Now I can reduce my ebook prices for you for 7 days

On Monday 29 September I reported a server issue to you on LinkedIn, Twitter/X and Mastodon. I can now report that my server restarted successfully this morning, and not showing any signs of the problem it had.

So what was the fault?

[Technical description!] I use Docker to run individual server containers on my physical server, which are each restarted on a daily basis using a *.yml control file. Over the last weekend in September one of those *.yml files had become corrupted, and the retries parameter, which had previous been “5”, became “5?????” (where ? was a non-printable character). The retries parameter tells the container how many tasks can be generated at a time, which had been 5, but after the corruption became undefined. This resulted in too many tasks, and more than the server could run, being created. The non-printable characters have now been removed, and normal operations have been restored.

When I reported the issue I promised that all of my ebook downloads would be discounted, and I always to keep my promises, so for the next 7 days (ending on 17Oct2025) there will be a 10% discount on all ebook downloads from this site.

See the Book Table page and search for books with “PDF” in their names.

Enjoy………..Phil

2nd Edition paperback books of “SAS Programming Experiences” and “Altair SLC” have been released to resellers, and today I saw them on Amazon. However, read this blog post first and be savvy buyers!

2nd Edition paperback book versions of my 2024 books, “SAS Programming Experiences” and “Altair SLC”, have been released to resellers today. I have already seen them today on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, so they should be appearing soon on Barnes & Noble, etc. too!

Please do not just go to the resellers first to buy them. The paperback book prices are now 100% higher than for the 1st Editions, because Amazon and other resellers charge much higher distribution fees. Prices of the ebooks are unchanged for the 2nd Editions. However, I will endeavour to apply discounted prices regularly on Lulu.com and this blog, which will be advertised on the Book Table web page.

In particular, please consider purchasing ebook downloads from this blog site. Why? Because a download from here is cheaper AND allows you to download any future editions for free using the link in your confirmation email!

The Second Edition of each book now includes information about both the 2024 and 2025 releases of Altair SLC, and have been reviewed by Altair specialists.

Follow the links below for more details:

Now I am retired, my course notes are less likely to be sold to course attendees, so I have reduced all of my PDF course note ebooks

I am retired now, so my course notes are less likely to be sold to course attendees. Therefore it makes sense to reduce all of my PDF course note ebooks on Lulu.com to GBP 5.50, and downloads from this site to GBP 5.00:

Remember that, as a SAS Programming member of the blog, you can also access the SAS courses as part of the monthly SAS Programming membership for GBP 5.00 per month, either as topics in the SAS Programming Forum or as LMS courses, via the SAS course – Home Page. SAS Programming membership includes free answers to any SAS-related questions in the SAS Programming Forum.

I always advocate that learning SAS programming requires practice, practice, practice! The SAS Institute provide free, but limited, SAS programming access for training purposes only via SAS On-Demand for Academics. On the other hand, Altair provide free and full SAS programming access for all purposes (including commercial use, but excluding command line and remote access) via the Personal Edition of Altair SLC.

September’s paperback 30% discounts on Lulu.com will expire on 30 September

Please do not buy these paperbacks from resellers (when they eventually become available), like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., as the resellers overinflate their prices, but wait for discounted prices for the paperbacks on Lulu.com between the 1st and 30th day of “odd” months (Jan, Mar, May, Jul, Sep and Nov), or download the equivalent ebooks instead (always discounted) from the Book Table, which is where the lowest prices for my paperbacks and ebooks can always be found.

More details can be found at 2nd Edition paperbacks now have 30% discounts on Lulu.com in “odd” months.

Please support your independent authors and publishers! Thank you.

This month’s paperback 30% discounts on Lulu.com will expire on 30 July

More details can be found at 2nd Edition paperbacks now have 30% discounts on Lulu.com in “odd” months.

Please support your independent authors and publishers! Thank you.

2nd Edition paperbacks now have 30% discounts on Lulu.com in “odd” months

The original editions only included details of the 2024 versions of Altair SLC, but with the release of 2025 versions of Altair SLC, it seemed right to revise my SAS Programming Experiences and Altair SLC paperbacks and ebooks to include the new features of Altair SLC 2025.

Some of the windows in Altair Analytics Workbench have changed significantly between 2024 and 2025, but the major difference you will see is that the 2nd Editions will be available shortly on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Ingram, etc.

However, please do not buy these editions there, as the resellers inflate their prices, but wait for discounted prices for the paperbacks on Lulu.com starting on 01Jul2025 (which should be in every “odd” month: Jan, Mar, May, Jul, Sep and Nov, from 1st to 30th each month), or download the equivalent ebooks instead from the Book Table, which is where the lowest prices for paperbacks and ebooks can always be found.

Please support your independent authors and publishers! Thank you.