SAS

SAS (Statistical Analysis System) is a privative software suite developed by SAS Institute for advanced analytics, multivariate analyses, business intelligence, data management, and predictive analytics. Initially written in PL/I, Fortran, and assembly language, it was re-written in C in order to run in UNIX, MS-DOS, and Windows. SAS is composed with different modules and framework in order to tackle problems as Supply Chain Intelligence, Customer Relationship Management, Fraud, “Governance, Risk and Compliance”, among others. It is useful for easy and close statistical problems in the fields of statistics and Business Analytics.

The main features of the SAS language are:

• They have easy interfaces to read data. Warning with the limitation of long names.
• For data computation the loops are implicit with the problems and limitations which can create.
• Easy to create macros.
• Good reporting tools.
• Easy to compute different statistical measures.
• Efficient in sequentially data access and good integration with SQL.
• You do not have easy access to some files as dll’s and parts of the code. Sometimes you are totally constraint by these limitations.
• Too rigid. Some frameworks do not have easy way to extend them and that limits the adaptability of the code.
• Tradition / habit and actual infrastructure: SAS was a language and software suit from 70’s. There are a lot of companies using SAS and they performance rely on SAS. Also there are a lot of professionals with extended experience on SAS. The cost of migration (in money, time and risk) make the companies be conservative.
• SAS doesn’t necessarily perform everything in memory, so for big data, they have better solutions as R.

As we mentioned SAS is a commercial language, and so you can have technical support. SAS is recommended for doing commercial solutions without any owned large group of technical support. It is easy to learn, it has a good error handling and good reporting tools. When you have a limited problem with limited solutions and it is difficult to generalize or adapt this problem to others. SAS could give you a quick and easy solution. In other hand if you need more flexible solutions it is better to go to R.

See also

Python, Julia, R, Matlab, Go (Programming language), Java, C, Fortran, Business Intelligence

Material

• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.soft-sys.sas
• http://www.sascommunity.org/wiki/Sasopedia/Language_elements

Books

• SAS Publishing (2011). SAS Certification Prep Guide: Base Programming for Sas 9. SAS Institute
• Cody, Ron. (2007). Learning SAS by Example: A Programmer’s Guide. SAS Institute
• Delwiche, Lora D.; Slaughter, Susan J. (2003). The Little SAS Book: A Primer. SAS Institute
• Kleinman, Ken; Horton, Nicholas J. (2009). Sas And R: Data Management, Statistical Analysis, And Graphics. Chapman & Hall/CRC