NOTE: SGF 2010 in Social Media: Archive

I got stuck whilst trawling though old tweets regarding this year's SAS Global Forum (SGF). I very quickly hit the following message from Twitter: Older tweets are temporarily unavailable. Repeated visits haven't resulted in a different outcome. But I have found a solution.

One of the last messages that's actually available revealed the solution: TwapperKeeper. It's a bit of a strange name but in essence it's an archive for tweets. So, if you visit http://www.twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/sgf10 you'll find an archive of SGF tweets. And you can create your own archives too. Looks useful. Give it a try and let me know...

NOTE: Stored Process Server vs Workspace Server - What's the difference?

A favourite interview question of mine is: Compare and contrast SAS 9's stored process server and workspace server. This question is very good at revealing whether candidates actually understand some of what's going on behind the scenes of SAS 9.

I ask this question of developers as well as administrators and architects. Whilst some developers don't need to know this behind-the-scenes information, the fact that a developer has an inquiring mind and has made the effort to find the information tells me something positive about that person. And, I'm not certain that developers don't need to know how their code is executed...

NOTE: SAS Editor Shortcuts (DMS only)

I stumbled across a very interesting paper the other day. Not only was it written (with others) by my old friend John (H) King but it spoke about something I've never explored before: customising the Display Manager (DMS). The paper is entitled "Automagically Copying and Pasting Variable Names" and was presented at Coders' Corner at this year's SAS Global Forum (SGF) in Seattle.

The paper describes two methods that use some less well known base SAS techniques that let you easily build tools to accomplish common tasks. One method lets users right-click on a file in a SAS explorer window and then select a task from a menu. The other lets you assign a key that, when pressed, gives you or your users a way to specify a one or two-level filename and then run a particular task on the file. Both methods give you an easy way to accomplish virtually any task, process or analysis.

Recommended reading!

Developer Testing

When I took over a "failing" development team in a high-profile banking project in London, I introduced a simple form for handing-over code from the development team to the system testing team. Apart from details such as why the change was being made and how the code should be transported from Dev to Test environments (and properly installed), the form included a tick-box to say that developer testing had been done (and fields to specify where the test code and test output was archived). Prior to this the developers had complained of being pressured to hand-over untested code in a management rush to get development work "completed".

I told the team that I wanted the form filled-in honestly and openly. I told them that if they had done no testing because they had been pressured into delivering before they had time to test it, they should write this fact on the form and must not tick the "tested" box. I told them they had my full support if anybody came back to them and complained about the quality of the code after they'd not tested it due to management pressure. Of course, I also told them I wanted to be told if they felt they were being pressured to skip testing. And finally, I told them that I expected them to include appropriate time for appropriate amounts of testing in any plans they put forward.

NOTE: SAS Professionals Convention 2010

If you are a SAS professional and you're within travelling distance of SAS's UK headquarters between June 15 and 17, you should give serious consideration to attending the 2010 SAS Professionals Convention. If you only have one shot at training this year, this should be your choice. My own experience from attending past conventions and SIG barbecues is that these events offer focused, detailed information about SAS software, and they offer excellent opportunities to talk to fellow professionals (often more valuable than the sessions), in a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere.

This year's three-day conference features a keynote session from Chris Hemedinger (a senior member of the team that builds SAS Enterprise Guide & SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office, and author of the Sasdummy blog and the SAS for Dummies book). The agenda shows one day focused upon industries, another focused upon technology, and a third focused upon career development.

The conference costs £75 for all three days if you book before 24th April. You cannot get better value than that! But I didn't yet mention that SAS are also offering free usage of the "SAS Expert Channel" until the end of the year. The expert channel is a series of live web training courses.

Will I see you there?...

Established at the start of 2009, the SAS Professionals network has grown from strength to strength. In fact, the SAS UK web site has an interesting review of the benefit it delivered to SAS and its customers across 2009.

Are you aware of PBLS, the Premier Business Leadership Series? It's a business conference for business leaders organised by SAS in three continents: Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific (okay, four continents!). This year's European event is in Berlin from June 21 - 23.

NOTE: Go Green and Save Data Miles

Whilst attendees of SAS Global Forum (SGF) in Seattle, USA have been hearing about further SAS developments in in-database processing, I've been spending time back home in Blighty enlightening one of my clients' junior staff in the benefits of SQL pass-through. If your data is held outside of SAS (in Oracle or Teradata for example), you need to understand pass-through.

It's all about doing things in the best place. Typically, the channel that passes data from non-SAS data storage to SAS software is relatively slow when compared with the non-SAS data storage's ability to process data. Expressed more simply, you're better off asking Oracle to apply a where-clause and send the results to SAS than if you ask Oracle to send all records to SAS and allow SAS to apply the filtering. SAS may be able to filter data quickly, but you're better off not sending all that data down the pipe in the first place.

Pass-through is a SAS technology that passes SQL instructions to the data storage server for execution. There are two types of pass-through: implicit and explicit. Implicit pass-through is the cleverest. Explicit pass-through is where you offer statements to SAS that specifcialy (explicitly) instruct SAS to pass instructions to the data server; with implicit pass-through, you rely on SAS intelligence to look at standard SAS code and deduce that it could interpret some of it into SQL and pass it through to the data server. Steve Feder's NESUG 2007 paper succinctly describes alternative techniques and their respective merits.

In-database execution of SAS merely takes pass-through a step further. Pass-through allows execution of SQL within the database; in-database execution of SAS allows far more work to be done within the database server and thereby further reduce the amount of data sent down the long and slow pipe from database to SAS software.

Beginning with Teradata in 2008, SAS began partnering with database vendors to develop and deliver in-database execution of SAS. At this year's SGF, SAS announced the engagement of BlueCross Blue Shield of Tennessee in a pilot program embedding SAS Analytics within the company’s IBM DB2 enterprise data warehouse. SAS currently has plans to provide in-database execution of SAS software within Teradata, Netezza, IBM DB2, HP Neoview, Aster Data and Green Plum. These are exciting initiatives that will take the speed of SAS analytics to a new level.