Paperback book versions of my new books have been published on Lulu.com, which can be purchased at discounted prices until 05Jul2024

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I published paperback book versions of my new books, “SAS Programming Experiences: A How-To Guide from a Power SAS User” and a specific extract book about Altair SLC called “Altair SLC: The SAS Language Compiler”, on 21Jun2024.

Note that everything in “Altair SLC: The SAS Language Compiler” is included in “SAS Programming Experiences: A How-To Guide from a Power SAS User”, so purchasing both is not recommended, or necessary.

PDF ebook versions of my new books have been published on Lulu.com, but you can still download them at discounted prices from my blog site

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I published PDF ebook versions of my new books, “SAS Programming Experiences: A How-To Guide from a Power SAS User” and a specific extract book about Altair SLC called “Altair SLC: The SAS Language Compiler”, on 13Jun2024.

Note that everything in “Altair SLC: The SAS Language Compiler” is included in “SAS Programming Experiences: A How-To Guide from a Power SAS User”, so purchasing both is not recommended, or necessary.

Until the paperback versions are published on Lulu.com, the PDF ebooks downloaded from my blog site will be discounted, but prices will be adjusted as soon as the paperbacks have been published. This will probably be in early July 2024, after the physical printed proofs have been approved.

I haven’t been seen presenting for ages, but I’ll definitely be presenting in April and May 2021!

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The pandemic has impacted us all in many ways, and my presenting has definitely been severely curtailed. However, even though the pandemic has not yet been defeated, I was determined to make my voice heard and my face seen, so I’ve accepted 2 presentation opportunities in the next 2 months:

  • 01Apr2021: SUGUKI have asked me to present “Writing Reusable Macros: Managing SAS Data Sets” at a lunchtime webinar from 1215-1245 (British Summer Time = GMT+1). More details can be found at https://www.meetup.com/SUGUKI, and the Zoom call is limited to 100, so early registration is recommended.
  • 20May2021: Virtual SAS Global Forum 2021 will be including a Premium Session video presentation of “How Many Shades of Guide: SAS Enterprise Guide to 8.3 and SAS Studio to 3.81 with SAS 9.4: Part 1 – SAS Enterprise Guide”. The paper includes the history of both EG and SAS Studio, but time limits necessitated the paper be split into 2 presentations, and this one will be Part 1 only. Look out for Peedy!
    I’m not certain when the video presentation will be made public yet, but I’ll be having a live Q&A chat on 20May2021. Keep an eye on the SAS Global Forum web site for more details about when and how to join me.
  • I’m hoping to publish the Part 2 video later this year, probably on my blog site, which will look at the history of SAS Studio and a comparison with EG.

The SAS Programming Forum has been growing again with new SAS course sections and topics

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The SAS course sections and topics themselves are in the SAS Programming Forum, which can only be accessed by Programming level members, but Free members can read the SAS course – Home page and see the individual section and topic names.

The SAS course and the SAS Programming Forum continue to grow, I have just added some new course sections and topics about Data Steps, Base SAS Procedures, PROC SQL, SAS Macros, SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Studio, and there are now 54 topics in 7 different sections:

  • A. SAS components – 2 topics
  • B. Data Steps – 14 topics (1 new topic)
  • C. Base SAS Procedures – 6 topics (new section)
  • F. PROC SQL – 15 topics (1 new topic)
  • G. SAS Macros – 15 topics (11 new topics)
  • N. SAS Enterprise Guide – 1 topic (new section)
  • O. SAS Studio – 1 topic (new section)

More topics and sections are being developed, so register for free now to be kept up-to-date about all of the news, so you can take advantage of the Programmer level when it suits you best!

I’m presenting “How Many Shades of Guide: SAS Enterprise Guide to 8.1 and SAS Studio to 3.8 with SAS 9.4” at SAS Global Forum 2020 in Washington DC

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I’m presenting “How Many Shades of Guide: SAS Enterprise Guide to 8.1 and SAS Studio to 3.8 with SAS 9.4” at SAS Global Forum 2020 in Washington DC from 12:30pm to 1:30pm on Wednesday 1st April.

I’ve been using EG since 2001 when the version was 1.1.1, so I thought it would be a good idea to gather together all my EG and SAS Studio conference presentations with their assorted screenshots, and try to explain why each application works the way it does. In fact my EG installation has been updated since my paper was accepted, so I’ll actually be talking about EG 8.2 too!

I know some of you who are planning to attend SASGF 2020 may be thinking about starting their journeys home before my presentation starts. I would like to see everyone in the audience, but I do understand the pressures of transportation around DC, so, for you and anyone who can’t attend, I’ll be in a live-streaming session. Hopefully my session will also be recorded, so anyone who wants to learn more about EG and SAS Studio can watch me later.

For those of you who are attending SASGF please look out for me in the Quad, and elsewhere in the conference, and say Hi! I’ll try to post a link to my session here after the conference finishes (assuming it is recorded, of course!).

Would you like 1/2 day or 1 day SAS training at PharmaSUG China 2020?

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I was considering attending PharmaSUG China at the end of August 2019, but I’ve been told that a seminar held previously in China on SAS programming efficiency had a low attendance, as programmers there are relatively young, so they like to learn techniques on their own, or take classes on topics that they cannot learn from the internet. However, they prefer challenging topics, which are hard to learn on their own.

I have now decided to delay what could be my one and only visit to China until 2020, and use the extra preparation time to find out a little more about what SAS programmers in China would be most interested in.

Therefore, please could you help me by answering this quick poll about the 1/2 day training sessions I currently provide. The answers will guide me to the best package to offer to PharmaSUG China 2020. Links to most of the training courses can be found below the poll.

If you have not yet voted and can view the poll results, but the Vote button is grey, your IP address may already have been used to vote on this poll. This is in fact quite common when viewing blog posts from a company PC, so I would therefore recommend that you try voting using your phone or your home PC instead.

Thank you in advance………..Phil

I'm planning to go to PharmaSUG China in 2020. Which 1/2 day training courses would you be interested in attending there? (max 2)

  • Efficient SAS Programming (28%, 7 Votes)
  • Defensive SAS Programming (24%, 6 Votes)
  • Introduction to ODS Graph Templates (20%, 5 Votes)
  • SAS PROC SQL (12%, 3 Votes)
  • Enterprise Guide and SAS Studio (8%, 2 Votes)
  • Practical ODS Graphics (8%, 2 Votes)

Total Voters: 14

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Vote for my SASware Ballot Idea: Browsing SAS data sets in Enterprise Guide without locking

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I’ve posted a new idea for the SASware Ballot about how to avoid locking SAS data sets when browsing them in Enterprise Guide (EG). Anyone who uses EG now will have discovered this at some point! However, I will need your help to get this idea into the real SASware Ballot for users to vote for it, which is why I need my idea to be voted up in the SASware Ballot Ideas Community at “Browsing SAS data sets in Enterprise Guide without locking“.

If you think this is a good idea, then please vote for it and tell your colleagues to vote for it too!
Just click on the blue voting button after logging into SAS Communities.

Many thanks in advance……….Phil

PS. The idea above is not the only SASware Ballot Idea I have submitted:

The SAS Programming Forum is growing again with 8 new SAS course topics

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The SAS course and the SAS Programming Forum continue to grow, I have just added 8 new course topics about PROC SQL, and there are now 33 topics in 4 different sections:

  • [A] SAS components – 2 topics
  • Data Steps – 13 topics
  • [F] PROC SQL – 14 topics (8 new topics!)
  • [G] Macros – 4 topics

The SAS course topics themselves are in the SAS Programming Forum, which can only be accessed by Programmer level members, but Free members can read the SAS course – Home page and see the individual topic names.

More topics and sections are being developed, so register for free now to be kept up-to-date about all of the news, so you can take advantage of the Programmer level when it suits you best!

Are you dreaming of an Android Christmas?

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Most of you will know that I have been a SAS programmer for over 30 years, but I also use other programming languages too. The first language I learnt was FORTRAN IV while I was an undergraduate at the University of York, with which I wrote the mark-up language that I used to format my thesis, and I also played with BASIC while I was at university. More recently I have developed functionality for my web sites in JavaScript, Java and Perl, and created Enterprise Guide Add-ins in VB.Net.

However, when I bought my first smartphone, a Palm Pre, in 2010, I discovered that I could write my own apps for its operating system webOS in JavaScript, and joining the webOS developer group was free. This gave me my first experience of selling apps for smartphones and tablets. Unfortunately webOS did not survive very long after HP bought Palm, so I branched out into writing apps in JavaScript for Chrome browsers, and for Android devices in Java. Now even the Chrome Web Store is no longer accepting new or updated apps, so I am left with just developing for Android devices.

My core Android apps are a series of what I call ebook apps focusing on SAS programming. They were originally developed in JavaScript for webOS, but have ported fairly well to Java, and each contains a collection of rich text “ebook” pages that display automatically scaled and formatted text and images to match your own device dimensions and orientation. You can also email out the code samples and ask new questions for future releases. The Google Play and Amazon Appstore functionality to update installed versions of these apps means that any new or updated pages are automatically sent to existing app users.

Every now and then I get “bright” ideas for games and educational apps. A number of my existing Chrome browser apps are about improving mental arithmetic, which I see as becoming a lost skill. There are 3 apps available in the Chrome Web Store called Arithmetic Brain Quest, Multiply Brain Quest and Fraction Brain Quest. Each game randomly generates 10 questions in the different categories, which must be answered correctly in the allotted to build a pile of blocks to reach the top of the screen, with a high score saved for each category.

There are also some Android puzzle solver and game apps which can be downloaded directly from my blog site, because the Google Play and Amazon Appstore functionality is not required when these apps are in their final versions. The puzzle solver apps are to help you develop or solve puzzles you may see in newspapers, magazines and on-line for Sudoku 6×6, Sujiko and Master Sujiko.

My most recent game apps are based on a board game created by Tri-Ang in 1970 called Check-Lines. The board had 11 holes joined by straight lines, and 2 players had 5 pieces each with the aim of placing them to form 2 straight lines of 3 pieces each, so 1 piece was part of both lines like an X, L, V or T. The game starts with an empty board and the players take turns to place their pieces in empty holes, and then, when all the pieces are on the board, moving one of their pieces along a straight line into the empty hole until 2 lines are created, or no move is possible. I have created 2 apps, one is a free “dumb” app Check-Lines Board which just enforces the rules, and the other app Play Check-Lines uses a simple AI to provide the 2nd player with hints, as shown in the screenshot.

Whatever you are doing at this time of the year I would like to wish everyone a very happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

There is a new SAS Training Course list for 2017Q4

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There is now a new Training Course list for 2017Q4, which can be downloaded from here. The courses available in 2016 and early 2017 are still there, but had added a new course to the list:

  • ½ day Defensive SAS Programming training

I’m also developing some new SAS-related courses, based on the SAS course, which you can accelerate to production status by requesting them:

  • ½ day SAS Data Step training
  • ½ day SAS PROC SQL training
  • ½ day SAS macros training

Your interest in any of these courses will result in them being developed as priority tasks!

Please update ALL of my apps from Google Play!

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I hadn’t noticed, but I had to update the Google Licensing part of my apps to comply with new rules for Android 5 (Lollipop), which is why ALL of my apps installed from Google Play are no longer working on Android 5+!

Please don’t panic, as I’ve uploaded new versions of the following apps to Google Play that should work now:

  • Data Steps: Do This in SAS?
  • SQL: Do This in SAS?
  • Graphs: Do This in SAS?
  • Platforms: Do This in SAS?
  • EG: Do This in SAS?
  • Macros: Do This in SAS?
  • Efficiency: Do This in SAS?
  • Studio: Do This in SAS?

I’m glad I installed CyanogenMod 12 on my old HP TouchPad recently, so I can now be certain the Android 5 users can use my apps!

4 newly updated apps about Enterprise Guide, SAS macros, platforms and graphs

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I’ve now updated my remaining four apps, which can all be installed from Google Play, Amazon Appstore and Chrome Web Store, depending on your preferred platform.

“EG: How Do You Do This in SAS?” looks at writing and running SAS programs using Enterprise Guide. This paid-for app has had some of the answer text updated, including a link to this blog.

“Macros: How Do You Do This in SAS?” looks at SAS macros. This paid-for app has had some of the answer text updated, including a link to this blog.

“Platforms: How Do You Do This in SAS?” looks at SAS platform-dependencies on Windows, UNIX, Linux and z/OS. This paid-for app has had some of the answer text updated, including a link to this blog.

“Graphs: How Do You Do This in SAS?” looks at generating graphs using classic SAS/GRAPH and the new ODS Graphics. This paid-for app now includes information about how to annotate stacked bar charts in ODS Graphics.

The latest versions of all the apps can be found here.