My blog is back, but all of your saved links will need to be updated…

On 13Feb2025 my broadband was upgraded, which set in motion a chain of events that I have only this weekend managed to control. As a result, where before you used https://hollandnumerics.org.uk/wordpress to access this site, you should now use just https://hollandnumerics.org.uk. Which means that the link to my last “hopeful” post is now here: Have you missed me? I think my blog site is back. Let me explain…

While in February I thought my blog site was back online, it was unbelievably slow, so I started searching for a reason:

I checked the firewalls in the new docker containers, Linux server and router, but nothing I changed had any positive impact.
I asked for help from the WordPress and Jetpack community, but nothing improved my situation.
Finally, after scouring through the various logs on my Linux server, I found a reference to incorrect DNS (Domain Name Server) addresses. Correcting them in /etc/network/interfaces to match my router resolved all of the problems connecting to WordPress and Jetpack servers, and, suddenly, my blog site sprang into life again.

My problems are still not completely over, as I have a collection of non-WordPress web pages that will not happily co-exist with my blog site, so I am asking the StackOverFlow community for assistance (I have 2 docker containers: WordPress exposing port 443, and ownCloud exposing port 8080. Can I add a Perl/httpd container to run exposing port 80?). If you can help, then please post a suggestion there.

Thanks in advance………….Phil

PS. You can also comment on my Docker query at https://forums.docker.com/t/unable-to-start-httpd-latest-image-httpd-foreground-cannot-find-httpd/147124/2.

Have you missed me? I think my blog site is back. Let me explain…

On Thursday (13Feb2025) my broadband connection was upgraded from copper wire to full fibre, but it could not be tested, because my router was not compatible.

I reconfigured my router to temporarily go back to my copper wire connection, but, even though my internet service provider (ISP) had agreed to send me a suitable router, they still shut down that line, because the full fibre installation had been completed.

The new router arrived at breakfast time on Friday (14Feb2025), but we did not hear the doorbell, because it relies on WiFi, which had been disabled! Only a chance look out of the window revealed a very patient postman! A very stressful hour followed while I configured the new router ready to restart the blog server, reinstated the internet and WiFi connections, and connect the new web phone, as I needed to work on a client’s server that day. Later in the day my ISP sent me a message that my router was on its way to me!?

My ISP’s support teams are very friendly and helpful, but I am certain they would be less busy if they completed tasks correctly at the first attempt! Friday afternoon was punctuated with online chat discussions with them about access to their business portal to update the web phone settings, which have now been resolved.

My penultimate discussion with my ISP resulted from some access issues to the blog server. In order to assign a web address to the server’s IP address it has to be static, which had been ordered as part of the upgrade package. Mid-afternoon the web address stopped working, which suggested the IP address I had assigned to the web address was dynamic, rather than static. I assigned the new IP address to the web address and, so far, it has not changed again, but my ISP has not yet confirmed that it is now static, which is why I said that I think my blog site is back.

Finally on Monday (17Feb2025) I had a very fruitful conversation with my ISP’s Tech Support, who understood me immediately and finally set my IP address to a static IP address, which worked after I had rebooted my router. This was a revelation, as my previous contacts with Tech Support had been convoluted and ultimately unsuccessful. Therefore, I have spent the day rooting out the occurrences of the old IP address from my WordPress configuration. I am hoping that members of this blog will now be able to interact with it again!

Recommendation: If you have a working server connected to a specific static IP address, DO NOT change it!!

I won Altair Community Champion January 2025

Finally I have proof that I won Altair Community Champion January 2025, which appears to have been the first one:

https://community.altair.com/discussion/61533/community-champion-of-the-month-january-2025

I am feeling honoured, but slightly surprised too!…………Phil

Scheduled downtime: broadband upgrade on Thursday 13 February 2025

There will be a scheduled downtime of the blog site on Thursday 13 February 2025 while the broadband connection is upgraded to full fibre. The upgrade work is due to take place between 0800hr and 1300hr (GMT), but the downtime may extend beyond this period to allow for any amendments to server connections that are also needed.

A message will be sent to Twitter/X, LinkedIn, BlueSky, Mastodon and blog members as soon as the site is fully available after the downtime.

Thank you in advance for your patience!

Free advertising for active recruiters globally! SAS-related Jobs from Recruiters in the UK, Europe, India and Philippines in January 2025

Looking for a SAS-related job?

There are a number of SAS-related jobs in the SAS Jobs Listing this month in the UK, Europe, India and Philippines and the links are open to all site visitors:

Country	Jobs Advertised	From Company
Europe	Pharmaceutical contract positions	ClinChoice
Europe	Pharmaceutical permanent positions	ClinChoice
UK	Pharmaceutical contract positions	ClinChoice
UK	Pharmaceutical permanent positions	ClinChoice
Philippines	Pharmaceutical permanent positions	ClinChoice
India	Pharmaceutical permanent positions	ClinChoice

Please use the links in the SAS Jobs Listing to apply for these positions. All recruiters have contact details and links to their web sites on each job post.

Recruiters looking for candidates

I’m always looking for new recruiters to post SAS-related jobs on this site covering India, UK, the Americas (particularly USA), Europe and the Rest of the World.

If you have a regular supply of SAS jobs in any of these regions, then there is a free trial which is open to all recruiters, but with 2 simple rules:

The free trial will be extended by an additional calendar month only when a job is posted, and will expire automatically if no job has been posted in a calendar month.
The posted jobs must be in some way SAS-related.

Please register for Free membership, and then send your jobs to phil@hollandnumerics.org.uk before 05Feb2025 to be included in this post next month! You will be manually upgraded to a Recruiter member if you’ve never taken part in this free trial before.

The current regional breakdown of registered blog members is as follows, but note that the SAS Jobs Listing is open to all site visitors:

Position	Region	Percentage of Membership	Members
1	Indian Sub-continent	38.3%	163
2	The Americas	22.3%	95
3	UK	21.8%	93
4	Europe	11.0%	47
5	Rest of the World	6.6%	28

I am researching for 3 new Altair SLC books

I am researching for 3 new Altair SLC books to add to my recently published book about Altair SLC. They will look into a range of aspects and programming using full licences, unlike my previous book that concentrated on the free Community Edition (now called the Personal Edition), and also more advanced aspects available in the Personal Edition, but not included in my previous book, such as Workflows, clinical data analysis and ODBC database connections.

What information would you like to read more about in the new books?

I have already been trying out the Communicate and Link features of Altair SLC, and hope to extend this to the Hub very soon.

My provisional book titles are:

Advanced Altair SLC
Altair SLC for Business Users
Altair SLC for Companies

Thanks in advance….…Phil

Altair Community post: I am researching for 3 new Altair SLC books

Altair SLC: The SAS Language Compiler (paperback) – Second Edition

The book concentrates on Altair SLC, looking at the pros and cons of using Altair SLC to develop SAS programs. Code samples are provided throughout this book, so you can learn more about Altair SLC and SAS programming by following these examples.

Topics included:

What is Altair SLC?
Introduction to Altair Analytics Workbench
Altair SLC for Clinical Trials
Generating Graphics with Altair SLC
Using Altair SLC with R and Python

Download for free the SAS programs in this book from here.

Note: these chapters are included in SAS Programming Experiences: A How-To Guide from a Power SAS User, so, if you have already purchased this book, then you already have these chapters!

Order Now!

About the Book

What is Altair SLC?
Introduction to Altair Analytics Workbench
Altair SLC for Clinical Trials
Generating Graphics with Altair SLC
Using Altair SLC with R and Python

Download for free the SAS programs in this book from here. Note: these chapters are included in SAS Programming Experiences: A How-To Guide from a Power SAS User, so, if you have already purchased this book, then you already have these chapters!

Details

Author: Philip R Holland
Genre: Computer Programming Language
Tags: Altair Analytics Workbench, Altair SLC, data step, graphics, ODS Graphics, PROC SGPLOT, programming, Python, R, Recommended Books, sas, VSCode, windows
Publisher: Lulu.com
Publication Year: 2025
Format: Paperback
Length: 112
ISBN: 9781326755478
List Price: £20.49

Phil has used SAS on all of the platforms, mainframe, UNIX, and Windows. If Mac was a platform, Phil would take you as reader there, too. He takes you to Altair SLC, R, and Python, where you can be a user of the SAS language, and those two ever more popular adjuncts to SAS, without the expense of a SAS licence, and clarifies the differences between SAS Software and Altair SLC. The book includes a graphics capabilities tour with the various tools in its scope. Nowhere else available is the chapter devoted to Altair SLC for Clinical Trials, which is like a book-guided Hands-On Workshop self-help get-acquainted tutorial. The book will take you to places that nobody else would take you. Explore it and explore SAS.

– LeRoy Bessler, Bessler Consulting and Research

Order Now

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Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the page above are "affiliate links." This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

Altair SLC: The SAS Language Compiler (PDF) – Second Edition

Topics included:

What is Altair SLC?
Introduction to Altair Analytics Workbench
Altair SLC for Clinical Trials
Generating Graphics with Altair SLC
Using Altair SLC with R and Python

Download for free the SAS programs in this book from here.

Note: these chapters are included in SAS Programming Experiences: A How-To Guide from a Power SAS User, so, if you have already purchased this book, then you already have these chapters!

Order Now!

About the Book

Topics included:

What is Altair SLC?
Introduction to Altair Analytics Workbench
Altair SLC for Clinical Trials
Generating Graphics with Altair SLC
Using Altair SLC with R and Python

Download for free the SAS programs in this book from here.

Note: these chapters are included in SAS Programming Experiences: A How-To Guide from a Power SAS User, so, if you have already purchased this book, then you already have these chapters!

Details

Author: Philip R Holland
Genre: Computer Programming Language
Tags: Altair Analytics Workbench, Altair SLC, data step, graphics, ODS Graphics, PROC SGPLOT, programming, Python, R, Recommended Books, sas, VSCode, windows
Publisher: Lulu.com
Publication Year: 2025
Format: PDF
Length: 112
List Price: £5.50
eBook Price: £5.50

– LeRoy Bessler, Bessler Consulting and Research

Order Now

Download for £5.00

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3 new things I have learnt about Altair SLC this week

I have always wanted to create a neural network using the SAS language from the moment it was announced, but SAS software restricted this feature to paid-for components that I had no other use for. However, using features available in the free Personal Edition of Altair SLC and Altair Analytics Workbench, I have created a neural network to analyse the Iris data set, which uses PROC MLP, but I created it using pre-built nodes for a Workflow in Analytics Workbench.

I have just watched a video demo from an Altair Employee on the Altair Community site about importing EG project files into Analytics Workbench Workflows. No version numbers were mentioned in or around this video, but it appears to be possible now, or at least soon!

For business users the Linux installation of Altair SLC is treated as a server, rather than a workstation, installation. However, when I installed it I thought that the only way to access it would be as a server from a Windows-installed Analytics Workbench, but there is also a Linux version of Analytics Workbench available to business users, and it looks just like the Windows version.

More reasons to consider migrating from Foundation SAS to Altair SLC!

Keep your eyes open for more books about Altair SLC coming soon…

Using SAS Software or Altair SLC to read OpenDocument Spreadsheets

Several years ago I wrote a conference paper about reading non‑standard spreadsheet files called “Help, I’ve Received a Spreadsheet File from StarOffice Calc…..!”, which explained how to extract the XML from a StarOffice Calc file, and then convert that XML into a SAS data set.

OpenDocument spreadsheet files can now be read with both Microsoft Office and LibreOffice (my preferred office suite), but a SAS program still has no way to read this file format directly.

I have now published a SAS program, which works in SAS Software and Altair SLC, to extract all of the individual XML sheets from an OpenDocument spreadsheet into their own SAS data sets. See the “SAS Hints and Tips” chapter in “SAS Programming Experiences: A How-To Guide from a Power SAS User” (both in paperback or PDF formats) for details about this SAS program.

VIEWS News 77 (2024Q3/Q4) has been published!

VIEWS News issue 77 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 issue has been delayed, because I under-estimated how much effort organising my significant birthday celebrations would take!. It will, therefore, cover Q3 and Q4 of 2024. This newsletter issue includes a macro that everybody needs to know for categorical data with a group variable from LeRoy Bessler, and Richard Carson gives us 2 useful tips. 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

Special offer to celebrate my birthday in September failed! :-( However, I will reduce my ebook prices on 3 days in October instead! :-)

Nobody, and I mean nobody, replied in time to my celebration post with suggestions for discounted prices for my “SAS Programming Experiences” and “Altair SLC” ebooks, so I will not be able to reduce their prices in September.

However, I will reduce my ebook prices for 3 days in October instead!

From 2-4 October 2024 the ebook download prices will be reduced, and downloading these ebooks from this site will also allow you to freely download them again when a new edition is published:

“SAS Programming Experiences” ebook downloads will be reduced from £7.00 to £6.50.
“Altair SLC” ebook downloads will be reduced from £5.00 to £4.50.

This offer will start at 09:00 (UK time) on 2 October 2024 and end at 21:00 (UK time) on 4 October 2024!!

Enjoy while you can!

Improvements to the SAS-related ebook web apps

Over recent weeks I have been retiring my ebook apps from Google Play and Chrome Web Store (with Amazon Appstore apps due to be retired later this year) and updating the app links in my ebook web apps on this site. This will mean that you will always see the latest information in the app here, and they will be available on all platforms that support web browsing.

There are still a few content updates to do, like replacing SAS University Edition with SAS On-Demand for Academics, and adding more information about Altair SLC, but they will be made over time, along with other updates and new web apps.

Features of the web apps on this site:

Drop-down contents list.
Adjustable font size and text flow to fit the browser window with [A-] and [A+] buttons.
Page up [Pg+] and down [Pg-] buttons.
Emails generated from clickable code fragments.
Ask a new question [Ask?] button to generate emails with suggestions.
Some apps include an index too.

I realise that there are still some app users out there who will feel abandoned, so, for those who have never subscribed to the SAS Programming Forum, register for Free membership of this blog, email a screenshot of your app to sales@hollandnumerics.org.uk (or use the app’s [Ask?] button) and I will give you a month’s free access to the SAS Programming Forum and to the ebook web apps as a thank you for your support.

When you have logged into the blog, you will see menu items for the web apps based on your membership.

Warning: the apps themselves are restricted to only work when opened from these web lists, so adding the individual apps to your browser favourites will not be helpful!