Unplanned Sabbatical - NO MORE

So, it's been a bit quiet in NOTE:land for the last six months. I last wrote in January, and it's now August.

I started the NOTE: blog in July 2009. Since then, up to January, I have posted 459 articles. That's an average of more than 8 posts per month. I wasn't aware of these numbers until I calculated them to write this article, but maybe they go some way to explaining why I hit a point in January where I felt I had to take a break from writing. At first it was just "a few weeks" but it's turned into months.

Despite publishing nothing for the last six months, the NOTE: site has received 7,500+ hits per month, so I guess there must be something of interest in those 459 articles.

I've always enjoyed writing my posts for NOTE:, so I knew that my "sabbatical" would end sooner rather than later. And so, you can now reinstate your expectations of a steady stream of stuff about SAS software, software development practices, data warehousing, business intelligence, and analytics, plus occasional mentions of broader technical topics that are of personal interest to me, e.g. Android and Bletchley Park.

And finally, thank you to those who sent kind messages of concern regarding my sudden silence in January. I was touched by your concern.

200,000 and Growing

Yay! We just topped 200,000 hits on the blog. Since I started it in 2009, I've posted 433 posts on the NOTE: blog. I'm humbled that people continue to find the content interesting. Keep tuning in!

NOTE: Celebrates Its Third Birthday

It seems a lot longer, yet today is just NOTE:'s 3rd birthday*. In that time we've published over 300 posts and received over 80,000 page views.

Around 400 people subscribe to our RSS feed, and 200 subscribe to our email feed. We have nearly 150 Twitter followers.

Thank you for your continued interest in NOTE:. I write about what interests me; that's a mixture of SAS technical hints and tips combined with best practice for the software development life-cycle (SDLC), with an occasional mention of gadgetry.

I enjoy writing the blog articles, and I'm glad there's an audience for them. I'm always keen to increase the size of that audience, so if you have a colleague, manager, or team member who might also be interested in NOTE:, please do encourage them to subscribe.

I'm a freelance SAS consultant, and I work through Ratcliffe Technical Services Ltd from the UK. I individually provide a variety of services (covering all points of the SDLC, plus project management and team management), and I also provide additional individuals and teams for clients too. My posts come from a mixture of personal experience plus my avid readership of SDLC and team leadership books and articles.

Here's to the next 300 articles!

-------
* Yes, the very first three posts that you can see on NOTE: are from July 2009, but they were experimental and I didn't commit to the blog until September.

A New Look

If you're a regular visitor to the NOTE: web site you'll instantly notice that it looks different. NOTE:'s 2nd birthday is approaching (in July) so we thought it was time for a make-over. We're pleased with the new, brighter appearance. Please tell us what you think...

300 Subscribers. Thank you!

Google Feedburner tells me that the NOTE: blog had 300 subscribers yesterday. This feels like a significant milestone to me. Thank you for your continued interest in my musings and observations.

At the risk of skewing the figures and compounding the apparent popularity of these posts, some of the most popular posts over the last 18 months are listed below. You'll notice how I prefix the title of SAS-related posts with "NOTE:" but don't do so for more generic topics.

• Radical Action for Radical Times (1089 views)
• Dashboards & Scorecards: What To Measure (1057 views)
• Project Plans in Excel - Tracking to Completion (962 views)
• NOTE: Quick Comments in Enhanced Editor and EG (908 views)
• NOTE: "SAS Talks" Has a Home (818 views)
• NOTE: Marking Time with Enterprise Guide (795 views)

The blog got started for real in September 2009. We quickly hit 100 subscribers in October 2009, and we achieved 200 subscribers in November 2010.

For those interested in statistics and figures, we have made a total of 205 posts (206 if you include this one); Sitemeter tells us that we've had a total of 9,673 visits to the home page (262 of which were last week alone). The 300 subscribers comprise 156 email subscribers plus 144 RSS subscribers.

Please keep visiting and keep commenting. And don't forget to encourage your colleagues to take a look and subscribe too: either by getting automatic emails, using RSS, or following our Twitterstream (@aratcliffeuk).

NOTE: Celebrating Our 1st Birthday

Though I did a couple of test posts in July 2009, NOTE: really got started with its first post on Friday September 4th 2009. So, today we celebrate our first birthday.

In that year we've built a loyal band of followers. Thank you to all of you.

NOTE: is accessible in many different ways:

Just under 200 people use an RSS reader to get their SAS fix.
100 people get an automatic email copy of posts on any day in which an article is published.
73 people follow us on Twitter and get a near-instant tweet every time a new posts appears on NOTE:.
We get an average of 12 visitors to the web site each day, and they've created over 8,000 page views in the last year

I'm glad you find the content interesting. Please help us to grow further by telling your fellow SAS practitioners how informative NOTE: is, and by telling us what additional topics you'd like to read about.

Cheers!

NOTE: More Blogs of Note

I noticed that fellow blogger Chris Hemedinger recently recommended some SAS-related blogs. One was mine (my cheeks are turning a humble shade of red), another was Susan Slaughter's (mentioned in NOTE: before), and two were new to me.

I'm a follower of @AnnMariaStat on Twitter, and Chris is right to point-out her blog for those who have an interest in SAS and/or statistics and/or education. However, she went down in my estimation when she tweeted earlier today to say that she thought the upcoming Australia & New Zealand SAS Forum sounds better than the recent SAS Professional's Convention in the UK. Just kidding!

And Chris is right to highlight Stephen Philp's recent return to the blogging fold. Started in February 2005, it is a large repository of knowledge. Congratulations on the recent arrival, Stephen. Now it's time to get back to the blogging :)

NOTE: Successes and Tools

My previous post was our 100th and marks quite a milestone. Since starting in July last year, Google Feedburner tells us:

• yesterday we achieved our highest ever number of subscribers: 156
• we've clocked-up 36,000 views
• our most popular post of all time is Dashboards & Scorecards: What To Measure with 1,055 views (note that the widget in our right-margin shows popularity over the last 7 days)

And Site Meter tells us that the average visit length is over 2 minutes, so we know that you're reading the articles as well as just looking at them ;)

NOTE: Success Demonstrates BI Scope (the BI evolution)

Business Intelligence (BI) spans simple historic reporting to embedded real-time analytics. This is our 100th post and we're sharing our (minor) celebration with a SAS success.

BI is a commonly used term with a raft of different interpretations. Wikipedia begins to define it thus:

BI technologies provide historical, current, and predictive views of business operations. Common functions of Business Intelligence technologies are reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, and predictive analytics.

There's a BI evolutionary path that starts with simple, static reporting on historic data (often delivered with spreadsheets) through to real-time predictive analytics embedded into front-office transactional systems. Many suppliers who claim to offer BI systems barely get off the ground on the BI flight to delivering real value to the enterprise.

All those products that offer sexy, shiny, slick graphics with animated 2.5D fuel gauges that make your historic data look exciting but don't begin to tell you about where you're headed are flattering to deceive. If you're considering implementing a BI solution, make sure your chosen software will give you the headroom to grow the value that the solution delivers. Don't box yourself in with a sexy solution that ultimately offers no real intelligence.

POLL RESULT: What is your preferred method for accessing the NOTE: blog?

We recently ran a poll on the blog to understand your preferred method for accessing the information contained hereabouts. The ability to vote was open to all. A mere 27 votes were cast, not a sufficient number to draw significant conclusions from (and it was open to mis-use by voting more than once). However, the results are shown below and demonstrate a large apparent preference for access by RSS feed.

Visiting the web site:   1 ( 3%)
RSS reader:             16 (59%)
Email subscription:      4 (14%)
Twitter:                 4 (14%)
Other:                   2 ( 7%)

I'm intrigued by the 2 votes for "other". What other access channels are there? Please do post a comment with your suggestions.

NOTE: used to be published as an email and was sent (free) to over 4,000 subscribers. In converting to a blog we had assuemd that there would be a preference to receive new posts via email. It seems we may have been wrong. We will use the information to reconsider our posting pattern. We currently post just twice a week in order to keep down the volume of emails. If you have any posting preferences, please let us know in a comment.

NOTE: Find the Blog of Blogs at sasCommunity.org

sasCommunity.org has started a page named SAS Community Planet. Visitors to this page will find a collection of weblog entries by members of the SAS community... a blog of blogs. NOTE: is included in the collection (of course!), and the collection is growing steadily.

You can subscribe to the Planet through an RSS or OPML feed, so you need never miss a post from any of your favourite sources of SAS knowledge. The Planet itself is created from the RSS feeds of the individual blogs.

The web page seems to show about one month's worth of posts, but it loads very snappily.

Great idea!

POLL: What is your preferred method for accessing the NOTE: blog?

We're conducting a quick poll to better understand how you prefer to get your information from the NOTE: blog. Please take a quick moment to visit the blog home page and offer your vote.

Thanks in anticipation...

NOTE: SAS With Style: More thoughts on comments!

Taken from issue 2 of our (new retired) email newsletter:

Be Predictable

Using a consistent coding style is "a good thing", but there are two instances where you should not necessarily impose your chosen style. Firstly, when you are modifying some existing code that uses a different style; and secondly, there will always be exceptional cases where you can justify a deviation.

In respect of the first instance, it is not desirable to leave a module with a mixture of styles in it, so you have the choice of either changing everything to your own chosen style, or of making your changes and matching the existing style. You need to make a judgement about the amount of work involved in changing the existing code - are you just making a small change (in which case, do it in the existing style), or are you making wholesale changes (in which case, convert the lot to your new style).

In the eventuality of an exceptional case where you believe it is necessary to deviate from the chosen coding standards (the second instance), make sure you understand the reason for the particular coding standard that you would wish to break. And if you feel you are truly justified in what you are doing, make sure you document what you have done and the reasons why you did it.

Comments

Comments are a crucial part of coding, in my opinion. There are some schools of thought that eschew comments (most notably the eXtreme Programming folks) but I don't wholly subscribe to any of those.

The subject of comments is a big one. In this issue I'll focus on comments related to DO blocks since I talked about DO blocks in the last issue.

In general, comments should inform. They serve very little purpose if they merely state things about the code that are already obvious to the casual observer. In addition to informing the reader about your intent and the reasons why you chose a particular coding solution, comments can be useful to aid with the layout and structure of coding.

The layout and structure of your code helps you and others to comprehend it. One common aspect of layout and structure is indentation. I'll discuss indentation in greater detail in a future issue, but suffice it to say that most programmers indent lines of their code to indicate blocks and sub-blocks of code. The indentation is a great help in displaying the structure and flow of the code. I use paired comments with DO blocks to add to this. See the example below:

if 1 eq 0 then
do; /* Never true */
  moon = 'cheese';
  clouds = 'marshmallow';
end; /* Never true */

The DO and the END statements share the same comment. In the simple example above they don't add much to the understanding, but in complicated code with lots of sub-setted IFs and plenty of ELSEs to go with them, being able to match an END with a DO easily has great value.

On a SELECT statement, I use them thus:

select (switch);
  when (true)
  do; /* true */
    ...
  end; /* true */
  ...
end; /* select switch */

And with a DO loop, thus:

do ptr_digits = 1 to listlen(lDigits);
  ...
end; /* do over digits */

How about you? Do you do anything similar? Please leave a comment and let us know...

NOTE: SAS With Style - Make your programs readable and maintainable

Each issue of the (now-retired) NOTE: email newsletter used to feature an article named "SAS With Style". Here's the very first article in that series:

The style of your coding can be almost as important as the actual code itself. Of course, the most important aspect of any program is its ability to perform the task expected of it; but secondary to that is the simplicity with which it can be read and understood by both yourself and other programmers. Coding style covers a range of things including layout, naming, and choice of statements.

Many popular elements of style are simply common sense, and others are very much personal preference. But if you work in a development team with a number of members, you will find great benefits to be had by standardising on a common set of style elements. If style makes the code more easily readable, then a standard style makes any team member's code instantly more readable to the other team members; and new team members will get up to speed more quickly if they only have one style to get used to.

From Little Acorns...

Feedburner tells us that we achieved the mini-milestone of 100 subscribers yesterday. I'd like to say a big thank you to all of you who have shown interest in the blog, especially those who have taken time to comment on our posts or email us with your thoughts.

For those interested in statistics and figures, our first post was on 22nd July this year; we have made a total of 33 posts (34 if you include this one); Sitemeter tells us that we've had a total of 635 visits to the home page (127 of which were last week alone).

Please keep visiting and keep commenting. And don't forget to encourage your colleagues to take a look and subscribe too.

Newsletters About SAS Software

Whilst we retired our own NOTE: newsletter this year, there are still a number of other useful newsworthy publications available. The VIEWS user group publishes a quarterly newsletter (VIEWS News), and issue 2 of NOTE: featured another two...

If you want to receive more information about SAS software in your inbox, you might like to take a look at Systems Seminar Consultants' web site. They offer The Missing Semicolon at http://www.sys-seminar.com/. It is a quarterly publication, emailed in PDF format. Subscription is free.

I'm sure you're already aware of SAS Institute's technical and business newsletters at www.sas.com/subscriptions. If not, sign-up quickly! They're (bi)weekly HTML emails with links to articles on the SAS web site.

If you find any others, please let us know so that we can pass-on the word.

What is/was NOTE: ?

From the number of queries we've received it's clear that we're reaching a new audience with this blog and many readers don't know the history of NOTE:.

In a nutshell, NOTE: was our free, email newsletter that was sent irregularly and contained a wide variety of SAS-related news, hints, tips and experience. We officially retired NOTE: earlier this year and replaced it with this blog. There's an archive of the previous issues of NOTE: at www.NoteColon.info. Most of the articles are still relevant and interesting.

The first issue of NOTE: was sent to just 70 lucky recipients. Subscription was free, interest grew quickly, and the last issue went to 2,855 SAS practitioners. It peaked at 4,270.

Along the way we featured two crossword competitions, with prizes. You can still see these (and try them for yourself), alongside a couple of "coffee-time" crosswords at the RTSL web site. Have fun.

We will be re-publishing the most popular NOTE: articles into this blog from time-to-time, so you will be able to catch-up over time.

What will happen to NOTE: ?

We will steadily copy all relevant NOTE: articles from the archive to this blog so that this blog will form the new archive for NOTE:. Where appropriate or necessary we will update the articles.

Once we've begun to copy the old articles to here we'll also start posting new articles. In conjunction with this, we will invite NOTE: subscribers to use the blog and (optionally) subscribe to updates through any of the popular mechanisms.

Welcome to the RTSL.eu blog

Times change, and we're (belatedly) changing with them. Our irregular email newsletter named NOTE: is a very popular source of information for many, many SAS practitioners. Its archive remains (for the moment) at www.ratcliffe.co.uk/note_colon/.

The content and the quality of it won't change, but the delivery method will be via this blog. We will use this blog to post hints, tips and experience, plus news of developments at RTSL.eu, *and* news of Andrew's forthcoming book (a must-read for all SAS developers).

Thanks for joining us...