Peter Davis

THIS is how you knock down a door…

And if this is what we are up against, I shouldn’t worry…

Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) through its Physical Education Club (KPJ) organize a friendly bowling match between its members and also invited player from other UBD faculties and department last Monday (16 November 2009) at the Utama Bowling. The objective of the match is to binding ties between the staff and also UBD students as well as to show their talent in bowling games.

Present to supervise the match are the UBD ECA officer Cikgu Ali Sabri bin Hj.Abang. The match is won by the 2^nd year Diploma Student while Green Bowler and Hojas D’Platano at the second and third place respectively.

Meanwhile best male player award are won by Md Firafadzli Adini from the “Payung Hijau Pisang” team while Dk.Nadia Nabila Pg Abu Samah from the “Mighty Green Bowlers” team took the best female player award.  The match later concluded with the group photo.

La référence SAS, c’est avant tout une communauté où chacun à son niveau peut être à l’initiative de projets qui démocratisent l’accès aux métiers sous SAS, bien au delà des frontières. Comment contribuer ?

Chaque jeudi, les articles des lecteurs du blog seront publiés dans une nouvelle chronique JEUDI – VOUS AVEZ LA PAROLE. Est-ce fait pour vour ?

1. Quelle(s) citation(s) vous qualifie(nt)?

Si vous répondez positivement sur une de citations, vous avez la qualité principale requise : un intérêt certain pour le sujet

1. Vous êtes avide des nouveautés, d’astuces sous SAS.
2. Vous avez un œil averti sur l’actualité de votre secteur d’activité.
3. Vous êtes spécialisé sur une solution SAS (Stat, Enterprise Guide, Enterprise Miner, Graph, etc.).
4. Vous voulez communiquez votre point de vue sur le monde de travail (recrutement, gestion de projet, management, formation, législation, etc.).

2. Une activité qui s’adapte à vos besoins

Partagez vos réussites au grès de vos disponibilités :

• rédigez ponctuellement un article sur le sujet qui vous tient à cœur

et/ou

• prenez la responsabilité d’une chronique mensuelle.

3. Votre première étape

Rejoignez ce projet. Exprimez votre projet par email. Votre contact : veronique.bourcier@sasreference.fr

“Get around town,
Get around town.
Where the people look good,
Where the music is loud.
Get around town,
No need to stand proud.
Add your voice to the sound of the crowd”.

From “The Sound OF The Crowd” by Human League.

My daily working life involves gathering and analysing evidence, forming opinions and offering professional advice.  My days regularly involve preparing for meetings with clients, investors or stakeholders whose actions may be influenced in part by what I bring to the table.

Yesterday I had a board meeting with a difference.  My preparation involved taking cover in an underground carpark, dispensing with my suit and trying to avoid suspicion from other carpark users and ensuring I was out of sight of any CCTV cameras. 

A couple of minutes later, I emerged back into the natural daylight to be greeted with strange looks from those wandering about Holyrood Road, Arthur’s Seat and Our Dynamic Earth.  Soon a little crew of like-minded individuals had gathered, all looking a little like fish out of water in the shadow of the Scottish Parliament building.   

Was it a flash-mob?

Was it a publicity stunt?

Was it a demonstration?

What was it all about?

Find out here.

Ingredienser

250 g cocktailtomater

2 vitlöksklyftor

2 små gula lökar

1 liten morot

socker

salt

peppar

2 msk chilisås (mediumstark)

1 msk olivolja

saft från 1 lime

Släng i allt i en mixer. Mixa tills bra konsistens. koka upp och låt sjuda ca 2 min.

servers med pasta och parmesan

From the book title Chemistry as the Central of Science, we know that chemistry is vital in our daily life. This book covers the chemistry of life, particularly the Organic and Biological Chemistry. If you are a student from SAS, this book will be useful to you.  That’s because Chemistry is a must in SAS and a lot of modules will be related to it. As long as your career prospect is in science we need to excel in chemistry.

I recommend this book because it is a new edition available in RP library. So a lot of facts are being updated in this editon, and they also include some interesting and up to date facts about science and technology, thus it will help us in understanding the applications of chemistry in our daily life. From the very basic of how the little particles make up our life, to how compounds with different shapes will somehow affect their properties.  I read a very interesting part about the buffer solution with both alkaline and acid that prevent changes in the pH of the solution.

The book itself is widely used by Colleges and Universities around the world. I personally recommend this book because it is easy for beginners to understand. The book provides us with the guideline of how to master Chemistry. As long as we invest some time to read it patiently, we will be assured of gaining some insights. I think Chemistry is a very interesting subject! Don’t think that because it is a textbook, it will be boring! You can find the book at the west area of the library. Basically, the book will help us in building up our foundation in Chemistry, and most importantly, Chemistry is a must if we are doing any major courses in Science, be it life science or engineering.

Where to find the book?
Location: West
Call Number: QD31.3 CHE

Written by Lim Yong Xing

This book is mainly about Immunology and includes topics like immune responses, antibodies and inflammation and etc. In my opinion, this book is really informative as it includes most of the topics that are essential for Immunology module which I studied in year 2 semester 2. For instance, chapters like immune responses that includes inflammation, interaction of MHC molecules with antigenic peptides and etc which all this book provides useful information in understanding these topics. In addition, the information in this book is well organized and is easy to understand.  Moreover, it provides a guides in the understanding of the topics related to Immunology which also helps in UTs. All in all, this book is really suitable for those who are going to take or are already taking the module for Immunology in courses like Biomedical Sciences, Biotechnology, etc. You will be sure no regret in reading this book which can help a lot in understanding the module for Immunology.

Publisher             : Mosby

Call Number       : QR 181 ROI 20091

Location               : West

Reviewed by      : Wong Wai Chun

I used to go one of two routes when writing programs: (1) Include an options statement in the program to make it run how I want (2) Leave out the options statement and let the performance of the program be determined by the user’s preset system options.  Often (2) occurs because I have written a program for myself, and I know what my default options will be.  But, often, I share programs that were originally only intended for my own use.

Typically (1) is not necessary, but performance and/or output may not be optimized if certain options are not set properly.  For instance, if I’ve got a program that creates ~20k local macro variables as part of its processing, it’s probably best that SYMBOLGEN is not turned on when it’s executed.  So, what to do?  Well, by using PROC OPTSAVE and PROC OPTLOAD, you can allow your programs to run the way you want, without overwriting users’ options.

At the beginning of your program, before the options statement, insert the following:

proc optsave out=libref.dataset;

You don’t have to specify the ‘out=’ option – the default is SASUSER.MYOPTS, or WORK.MYOPTS if SASUSER is unavailable.  I prefer to specify the location myself with a data set name that won’t likely interfere with anything the user would not want overwritten – something like WORK.<program name>_OPTSET.  Then, simply set the options that are appropriate for the program.  At the end of the program, insert the following:

proc optload data=libref.dataset;

This will restore the user’s options to those which were in place before the program was run.  Voila! Now your program will run at its best without mucking about with anyone’s preferred options.

La economista Lila Moliniers sostiene que el actual sistema económico que tenemos genera pobreza y desempleo, en lugar de aumentar el empleo y le bienestar de la ciudadanía.

Justificó las transferencias monetarias de la Secretaria de Acción Social (SAS) para las familias en extrema pobreza.

En ese sentido mencionó que el grupo de familias que se encuentran en la extrema pobreza son marginadas, excluidas de toda política pública y de toda dinámica social.

Fue esta mañana durante el programa “La Ronda de los Pueblos” de la 1300 AM Radio Fe y Alegría Paraguay.

Escuche Audio:

2 msk smör

3-4 vitlöksklyftor

1 stor gul lök, fint hackad

2 msk tomatpuré

1-2 burkar hela tomater

3-4 färska tomater i kuber

cirka 1 tsk socker

1 lagerblad

lite sambal olek

10-15 basilikablad

1 tsk salt

nymald svartpeppar

saft av 1/2 citron

Fräs försiktigt löken i smöret ett par minuter, tillsätt vitlöken. Blanda ner hälften av basilikan, de hackade tomaterna (oskalade) och resterande ingredienser. Koka upp och låt puttra i typ 30 minuter.

Lors de l’importation de données d’un fichier Excel, il est fréquent d’importer au passage des caractères spéciaux non visible au premier coup d’œil. Par exemple, on peut trouver des blancs représentés en valeur hexadécimale par le code 20. Certains de ses caractères ressemblent à des blancs mais n’en sont pas. Ils ne disparaîtront donc pas avec une fonction COMPRESS sans troisième paramètre. La valeur hexadécimale de ces caractères est par contre une valeur lisible.

Voici comment afficher votre texte en valeur hexadécimale et ce dans la log ?

1. Illustration du problème

Dans cet exemple, une variable WEBISTE de longueur 25 est présente dans la table HEXFMT. Cette variable contient une observation www.sasreference.fr entourée d’un blanc avant et d’un blanc après. Cette valeur est créée ici au moyen de la fonction CAT.

Pour voir la différence entre la valeur de WEBSITE avec et sans un simple COMPRESS, une seconde variable EQUAL indique la valeur YES si les deux résultats sont identiques, NO sinon.

data hexfmt;
length website $25 equal $3;
website=cat(‘20′x,‘www.sasreference.fr’,‘20′x);
if website=compress(website) then equal=‘Yes’;
else equal=‘No’;
run;

proc print data=hexfmt;
run;

2. Voir les caractères hexadécimaux avec le format HEX

Ici, je vous propose de voir la valeur de la variable WEBSITE au moyen de l’instruction PUT. Il est possible de voir la valeur formatée plutôt que la valeur brute en faisant suivre la variable d’un format. Le format ici sera HEXw. où w est un nombre idéalement de la longueur de la variable fois deux. En effet, les caractères hexadécimaux sont toujours de longueur deux. Si votre texte est de longueur 25, il faudra 50 caractères pour l’afficher en valeur hexadécimale.

data hexfmt;
length website $25;
website=cat(‘20′x,‘www.sasreference.fr’,‘20′x);
put website= hex50.;
run;

proc print data=hexfmt;
run;

Dans le résultat qui suit, on voit donc le premier caractère de l’observation de WEBSITE a pour code 20. Le second caractère est la lettre W représentée par le code 77, et ainsi de suite.

Lecture complémentaire

• Remplacer un mot par un autre : la fonction TRANWRD

By STEVE LOHR

A TOUR of its carefully tended, 300-acre corporate campus here leaves little doubt why surveys, year after year, rate the SAS Institute, the world’s largest private software company, among the best places to work.

There is the subsidized day care and preschool. There are the four company doctors and the dozen nurses who provide free primary care. The recreational amenities include basketball and racquetball courts, a swimming pool, exercise rooms and 40 miles of running and biking trails. There is a meditation garden, as well as on-site haircuts, manicures, and jewelry repair. Employees are encouraged to work 35-hour weeks.

Academics have studied the company’s benefit-enhanced corporate culture as a model for nurturing creativity and loyalty among engineers and other workers. Six years ago, in a report on “60 Minutes,” Morley Safer called working at SAS “the good life.”

But that good life is under threat today as never before. SAS’s specialty, a lucrative niche called business intelligence software, is becoming mainstream. Free, open-source alternatives to some of the company’s products are increasingly popular. On the other end of the spectrum, the heavyweights of the software industry — Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and, especially, I.B.M. — are plunging in and investing billions of dollars.

“It will be a dogfight,” says Bill Hostmann, an analyst at Gartner. “SAS has never faced a competitor like I.B.M. And I do think I.B.M. sees SAS as a big, fatted cow.”

The term “business intelligence software” applies to a wide range of products and services, but all the technology is aimed at helping businesses mine nuggets of insight from mountains of data. SAS has traditionally specialized in advanced software to analyze huge data sets and to generate predictive statistical models for large corporations and government agencies.

Credit card companies, for example, use SAS to detect unusual buying patterns in real time, and to spot potentially fraudulent charges. Giant retail chains use SAS to tailor pricing and product offerings down to the store level. Telecommunications companies use SAS to identify the few thousand customers, among millions, most likely to switch to another cellphone carrier, and to aim marketing at them. SAS software is also used to parse sensor signals from North Sea oil rigs, combined with weather and structural data, to predict failure of parts before it happens. Of the 100 largest companies worldwide, 92 use SAS software.

But as the stream of companies’ collected data turns into a torrent, SAS and other software companies are trying to find new ways to harness it. The information is generated not only by computerized systems for tracking operations, customers and sales. It also comes from new data sources like Web site visits, social network chatter and public records accessible over the Internet, as well as genome sequences, sensor signals and surveillance tapes, all in digital form.

This data explosion, experts say, is an untapped asset at most companies, which lack the tools and skills to exploit it. Yet the long-range potential, they say, is to use this data for far more fine-grained analysis of markets, customer behavior and operations, making business more of a science and less a seat-of-the-pants art.

“Now, the data is available so business can move toward evidence-based decision-making,” says Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of the Center for Digital Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “This market is a huge opportunity.”

That opportunity is not lost on SAS. “Our advantage is the incredible depth of our technology, developed over years and applied to specific industries,” says James H. Goodnight, the chief executive and a co-founder of SAS. “No one can match our toolbox.”

Indeed, no one underestimates SAS’s technical prowess. The big question is whether the company’s seemingly pampered culture can embrace the higher-octane institutional metabolism that it will need to succeed.

“We know we have to change — no question about it,” says Jim Davis, 51, a senior vice president at SAS. “Our market space has changed dramatically in the last 18 months or so, more than at any time over the 33-year history of the company. We can’t sit back. Things are only going to get faster.”

THE company traces its roots to a time when computing was costly and for the few. Originally called Statistical Analysis System, it was founded in 1976 by Mr. Goodnight and three colleagues from the agricultural statistics department at North Carolina State University. Its techniques were initially used to calculate the intricacies of soil, weather, seed varieties and other factors to improve crop yields.

To build an audience, Mr. Goodnight spent nights packing up boxes of computer tapes and manuals, which he sent to university and corporate researchers. Soon, companies wanted him and his academic colleagues to develop software tools tailored for industry. In 1976 at a users’ conference, 300 or so people showed up, many from business.

“That was pretty much an ‘aha’ moment for us, that it was time to expand beyond the university,” Mr. Goodnight recalls. “It was a little scary, cutting the academic umbilical cord. But I was convinced we could do it.”

He and his colleagues at SAS developed their own programming language and software tools, and designed them for eggheads like themselves. Users were analysts with Ph.D.’s, working with programmers and employed by the largest companies at the forefront of using computing in their businesses, including banks, national retailers, insurers and drug companies.

SAS invested heavily in research and development, and even today allocates 22 percent of the company’s revenue to research. The formula has paid off in steady growth, year after year. Revenue reached $2.26 billion in 2008, up from $1.34 billion five years earlier.

Yet the company also faces the classic challenge of being the innovative pioneer — enjoying rich profit margins but facing new competition from rivals seeking to gain market share with lower prices and substitute technology.

In the last two years, the major software companies have scooped up companies in the business intelligence market. Among the larger moves, SAP bought Business Objects for $6.8 billion, I.B.M. bought Cognos for $4.9 billion and Oracle picked up Hyperion for $3.3 billion.

Still, those companies compete in the broad swath of the business intelligence market for reporting and analysis products. Such data on sales, shipments, customers and operations amount to a numbers-laden portrait of the recent past. The SAS stronghold is a more sophisticated kind of software typically called “advanced analytics and predictive modeling,” which uses historical and current data to try to peer into the future and model likely outcomes.

The competitive thrust that really grabbed SAS’s attention came in late July, when I.B.M. announced that it planned to pay $1.2 billion for SPSS, a maker of predictive modeling software. I.B.M. has placed SPSS and Cognos into a new business analytics and optimization group. That business will be supported by 200 scientists, and the company has said it will retrain or hire 4,000 consultants and analysts to work in the group.

“This is the big growth strategy for I.B.M., the company’s next big play for this decade,” says Ambuj Goyal, a computer scientist who is general manager of I.B.M’s business analytics software unit. “SAS comes from the legacy world of statisticians and programmers. The real opportunity is in deploying this technology broadly in corporations.”

To counter I.B.M. and others, SAS is looking to forge a tighter relationship with a big technology services company. It is also shortening product development cycles to 12 to 18 months, down from 24 to 36. “That’s what the market expects,” Mr. Davis says.

The most sweeping change is the company’s move toward the Internet model of software delivery — as a service that customers tap into over the Web, much as Google and other Internet companies do. SAS has dipped its toe in, with some initial products. But a major expansion is planned, supported by a sprawling $70 million data center scheduled to begin operating next year.

The remotely delivered software is part of a drive to broaden the market for SAS technology beyond an elite corps of quantitative analysts and into the rank-and-file of corporate professionals.

Analysts say the company’s strategy looks sound, even if the outcome is uncertain. “SAS has to do a lot of things right to succeed,” says Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president of research for Gartner. “But if it executes correctly, it could be a winner.”

ACROSS its campus here, there are signs that the SAS culture is evolving with the times. Rick Langston, 54, a senior software manager who joined the company 29 years ago, smiles and shrugs when asked about the 35-hour workweek. After leaving the office, Mr. Langston routinely checks on work e-mail at home.

These days, he explains, SAS is a global company with far-flung project teams, and overnight e-mails can resolve problems and speed things along. Deadline work to meet product development schedules, he adds, can mean long hours at times. “But this is certainly not a place where you are working 60-hour weeks, week in and week out,” he said.

To be sure, the corporate cocoon in Cary can breed insularity. SAS, for example, was slow to recognize the brewing challenge from free, open-source alternatives to some of its products. A free programming language and set of software tools for statistical computing, called R, has become increasingly popular at universities and labs.

The company shifted course earlier this year and modified its software so programs written with R work seamlessly with SAS technology. “Shame on us for not engaging more with the open-source community,” says Keith Collins, senior vice president and chief technology officer. “But we’re committed to doing that now.”

THE architect of the SAS culture is Mr. Goodnight, a lanky, laconic billionaire. The benefits have built up gradually over the years as a series of pragmatic steps, he says. The day-care program began after a valued employee was about to leave to take care of her young child. The on-site medical checkups grow out of the belief that “good health is good business,” he says.

Today, SAS estimates that its health care center saves the company $5 million a year, by providing care more cheaply than an outside insurer and by not having employees leave the campus for doctor’s visits. Employee turnover at SAS averages 4 percent a year, versus about 20 percent for the overall software industry.

The office atmosphere is sedate. There are no dogs roaming the halls, no Nerf-ball fights, no one jumping on trampolines — no whiff of Silicon Valley. The SAS culture is engineered for its own logic: to reduce distractions and stress, and thus foster creativity.

“The SAS model is sensible and durable; there’s nothing faddish or ephemeral,” says Richard Florida, a professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, who has studied SAS and is the author of “The Rise of the Creative Class.”

During the technology boom at the start of this decade, SAS considered a drastic change in its model: going public. Goldman Sachs bankers were brought in as advisers, and in 2000 SAS recruited a former Oracle executive, Andre Boisvert, as its president.

Under Mr. Boisvert, SAS installed a new financial reporting system and paid the sales force incentive commissions rather than salary only. But when technology stocks plummeted, the appeal of selling shares to the public also receded. Mr. Boisvert resigned from SAS in 2001 and is now an independent investor and consultant.

Mr. Goodnight recalls those days as a brief period of New Economy surrealism, and going public as a path wisely avoided. SAS, he says, is a culture averse to the short-term pressures of Wall Street, which he characterizes as “a bunch of 28-year-olds, hunched over spreadsheets, trying to tell you how to run your business.”

Unlike many other tech companies, SAS has had no recession-related layoffs this year. “I’ve got a two-year pipeline of projects in R & D,” Mr. Goodnight says. “Why would I lay anyone off?”

Mr. Goodnight, though 66, has no plans to retire himself. His fingerprints, colleagues say, remain all over the business, especially in meeting with customers and in overseeing research.

He is not only a statistician, but also a bit of gambler who enjoys calculating his chances. For example, he is co-author of a paper that simulated millions of possible outcomes in blackjack.

Mr. Goodnight regards his new rivals the way a confident card player might. He likes the odds, and he likes his hand.

“We’re pushing as fast as we can to stay ahead — on the cutting edge of everything,” he says. “We’ll do fine.”

Comença la setmana d’El crepuscle encén estels · IB3 Ràdio, 21:00 · amb el programa 448, en el qual ens visitarà GINA SAS, llicenciada en Hª de l’Art i crítica del Diario de Mallorca, per a parlar de la relació entre LA DONA I L’ART, amb exemples com l’obra de la nordamericana Kiki Smith, presentada la passada primavera a la Fundació Joan Miró de Barcelona. En el blog de Gina Sas trobareu més informació de la seva instal·lació Her Memory, però també hi ha els seus darrers escrits sobre la mostra de Joana Vasconcelos a l’Ajub d’Es Baluard de Palma. Són 428 mòduls de 3 flors de fibra de nylon il·luminades a través d’un dispositiu interior; he dit 428? Tenim temps fins el mes de febrer, però si hi anam demà se’n compleixen precisament 20 dies de la inauguració. Si afegim aquests 20 als 428 mòduls tendrem …448

…448, ja ho val, com Crepuscles comptam fins el dia d’avui.

· IB3 ràdio en directe ·

http://streaming01.ib3radio.com:8000/ib3radio.mp3

The Android GUI

I can’t remember whether my fascination with graphical user interfaces (GUI) began with Pong or the Mac SE, but somewhere along my long journey down the digital highway, I became convinced that the concept of GUI was as critical to the evolution of technology as the concept of brand management has been to the evolution of marketing.

Until recently, this conviction has diminished my technical credibility. In the ’80s, when I worked at SAS, I argued that statisticians were not computer scientists (what we called software developers back then) and therefore required a more intuitive manner with which to interface with our software. In the ’90s, when I worked at SGI, I fought the GUI battle for technologies such as email and web browsers, making little headway against UNIX engineers who believed GUI was a costly, inefficient, and irrelevant overhead to perfectly understandable command-line interfaces. I remember thinking then that if SGI—a company built on the vision of computer graphics—didn’t understand the power of graphical interfaces, no company would. Still, when I started my own company, Pie Digital, I stuck to my GUI guns. As my partners and I schlepped Sand Hill Road, I found myself eyed mockingly any time I would tout the holistic UX (User Experience, inclusive of GUI) of the Pie System. It was as if I were talking about our HR practices (nothing against HR—I’ve spent much of my career in HR—but other than being able to recruit engineers quickly, you don’t bring up the strategic relevance of HR practices in a VC pitch). My co-founders eventually convinced me to quell my UX/UI evangelism so we could appear more serious.

Then came the iPhone. Suddenly business folk from all walks are comparing capacitive versus resistive touch screens, arguing over the importance of muti-touch and gesturing, and engaging in all sorts human factors buzz talk. Last week Pie was visited by a CEO from an industry not known for caring a rat’s aorta for UI. He talked to me of the importance for anthropological human-computer interaction (HCI). Stunned, I opened once more the closet door of my evangelism and replied that I believed UX/UI was a primary differentiator for consumer-focused technologies. He nodded in agreement. It was liberating.

October 30, 2009

As a writer you cannot only expect praise for your work, but also criticism. That is just human nature. I have learned to live with criticism, and, knowing that I am not the ultimate source of all wisdom, I am willing to listen and learn as long as the criticism is constructive. The situation becomes very difficult, however, when your writing hurts the feeling of a person, and that person accuses you of false reflection of a certain event or person through means of superficial research.

That is exactly what happened to me a few days ago. Two of my entries on my blog got the attention of Natalie, who apparently lives in the United Kingdom. She responded to my blog entry Robert Nairac – Hero, Butcher, Homosexual…? as follows:

“I would be very interested in talking to you! You seem to have a cavalier approach to researching for your book and make extremely tenuous links.

I can state quite catagorically that Julian ‘Tony’ Ball was not psychotic and did not take drugs. Though he did bite his nails, this is a family trait.

Robert came from a very loving middle-class family who would be mortified to read you diatribe. He was not gay and if he was he would have been able to face it in the same way as he faced his life and death, with style and dignity.”

You can see her comment and my answer at the bottom of the entry. She left another, similar remark at the entry  Robert Nairac – Supplement to previous entry. We also initiated a brief communication through Facebook (see my Facebook reference to the right hand side of the screen), and I found out that Julian Ball was her father. After a few exchanges we decided that we both had made our points and to leave it at that.

Even though I felt sure that the research for my novel was meticulous, it leaves a bitter aftertaste when you hurt the feelings of somebody with something you wrote, and, naturally, doubt arises. As a result, I spent all of yesterday and this morning – starting at 5:30 am – with further research on the subject of Julian Ball and Robert Nairac. Without going into details – it doesn’t make sense to drag this matter on and on – I was relieved to find that my research was not flawed. Let me also state that my references to Julian Ball and Robert Nairac in my novel add only one small aspect to the Irish troubles as it takes place in my novel.

I will follow Natalie’s advice and I will read ‘Big Boy’s Rules‘ by Mark L. Urban, a book exploring covert operations against the IRA from the mid-1970s to the Loughgall shooting in 1987. I did, however, take the liberty of adding a highly controversial book to my reading list, ‘War Without Honour: True Story of Military Intelligence in Northern Ireland‘ by Fred Holroyd and Nick Burbridge.

Interesting enough, but both books were hard to come by and seem to be out of print. I managed to buy used copies through Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. I will follow up on my readings by writing reviews on this blog.

Uh oh. One of my favorite companies, the SAS Institute, is under increasing pressure from big, deep pocketed rivals. This NY Times article, Rivals Take Aim at the Software Company SAS – NYTimes.com, elaborates on the details. Since I’m confident that they’ll overcome the competitive threat, that’s not what this post is about. It’s about what the SAS leadership, led by founder, CEO, and PHOR, Jim Goodnight, does to continuously grow and develop both the company and its people. Here are some snippets from the article and this linked-to 60 minutes article that reinforce my faith in the company’s ability to overcome all odds:

There is the subsidized day care and preschool. There are the four company doctors and the dozen nurses who provide free primary care. The recreational amenities include basketball and racquetball courts, a swimming pool, exercise rooms and 40 miles of running and biking trails. There is a meditation garden, as well as on-site haircuts, manicures, and jewelry repair. Employees are encouraged to work 35-hour weeks.

The office atmosphere is sedate. There are no dogs roaming the halls, no Nerf-ball fights, no one jumping on trampolines — no whiff of Silicon Valley. The SAS culture is engineered for its own logic: to reduce distractions and stress, and thus foster creativity.

Employee turnover at SAS averages 4 percent a year, versus about 20 percent for the overall software industry.

SAS has never had a losing year and never laid off a single employee.

“No, we’re not altruistic by any stretch of the imagination. This is a for-profit business and we do all these things because it makes good business sense,” says Jeff Chambers, director of human resources at SAS.

“You know, I guess 95 percent of my assets drive out the front gate every evening,” says Goodnight. “It’s my job to bring them back.”

Academics have studied the company’s benefit-enhanced corporate culture as a model for nurturing creativity and loyalty among engineers and other workers.

SAS invested heavily in research and development, and even today allocates 22 percent of the company’s revenue to research. The formula has paid off in steady growth, year after year. Revenue reached $2.26 billion in 2008, up from $1.34 billion five years earlier.

Unlike many other tech companies, SAS has had no recession-related layoffs this year. “I’ve got a two-year pipeline of projects in R & D,” Mr. Goodnight says. “Why would I lay anyone off?”

Mr. Goodnight recalls those days as a brief period of New Economy surrealism, and going public as a path wisely avoided. SAS, he says, is a culture averse to the short-term pressures of Wall Street, which he characterizes as “a bunch of 28-year-olds, hunched over spreadsheets, trying to tell you how to run your business.”

Goodnight says it’s pressure from Wall Street to please shareholders by delivering rising quarterly earnings that has poisoned the corporate well.

Mr. Goodnight, though 66, has no plans to retire himself. His fingerprints, colleagues say, remain all over the business, especially in meeting with customers and in overseeing research.

Well, my life as a statistical programmer, anyway.

For those who deal heavily with the often cumbersome issues of data management, the SAS Macro facility can be an indispensable tool.  I most often find that macro code is used to automate repetitive tasks and to generalize programs across various parameters – these are, of course, very valuable capabilities.  But, aside from these more common uses, I have found great value in using the macro language (with a healthy smattering of %SYSFUNC) to construct stand-alone utilities to be used in a variety of contexts.

So, what is %SYSFUNC?  Well, as always, I would direct the curious SAS programmer to have a gander at the online doc, but for simplicity I’ll just say that it’s a macro function that allows the use of Base SAS functions, outside of the Data Step – a sort of SAS Rosetta Stone, if you will.  So, why is that useful?  Let’s look at a simple example.

Suppose you need your program to iterate some steps over an unknown number of variables in a user-supplied variable list – how would you do that?  Well, as with most programming challenges, I’m quite certain there are many ways – one way is to use the simple macro function, %WORDCOUNT:

%macro wordcount(varlist, delim=' ');
  %let count=%eval(%sysfunc(countc(&varlist, &delim)) + 1);
  &count
%mend wordcount;

%WORDCOUNT takes as arguments a variable list and the associated delimiter (defaulting to single-space-delimited).  Then, by using the COUNTC function (this is a Base SAS function, and to my knowledge there is no macro equivalent) nested within %SYSFUNC, it counts the number of delimiters, adds one and saves the result to the macro variable &count.  Note on the third line of the program that &count appears without a semicolon, this makes %WORDCOUNT an in-line function.  Now, this being a very simplistic example, it has some limitations.  Specifically, using the default delimiter, %WORDCOUNT will count every space.  So, if the variable list is actually, say, tab-delimited, &count may be inflated.  With this limitation noted, let’s see an example of how %WORDCOUNT could work inside of a macro program.

%macro example;
  %let varlist= one two three four;
  %do i=1 %to %wordcount(&varlist);
    %let varname=%scan(&varlist, &i);
    %put  current variable name is &varname;
  %end;
%mend;

Upon execution of the above example program, the following is printed to the log:

current variable name is one
current variable name is two
current variable name is three
current variable name is four

Alternative delimiters may be used in %WORDCOUNT as well.  If the variable is comma-delimited, the macro should be called as follows:

%wordcount(%quote(&varlist), delim=%str(,))

Here, to keep SAS from becoming confused into thinking we are attempting to supply too many parameters, %QUOTE masks the commas in &varlist at execution time and %STR masks the comma supplied as the delimiter parameter at compilation time.

Okay, so that could be useful , but it’s not exactly mind-blowing.  Let’s consider a more complex example.  Think of the ways that you would find the number of observations in a data set.  Now, what if you want to find the number of observations satisfying a certain set of conditions?   The %DSWHERE macro takes as arguments a data set name and a where clause (which defaults to true – if the user simply wants the total number of observations), saves the resulting count in a global macro variable and prints the results to the log.

%macro dswhere(dataset, where=1) /cmd;                        /* 1 */
  %let ds=&dataset.(where=(&where));
  %let dsid=%sysfunc(open(&ds));                              /* 2 */
  %if &dsid=^0 %then %do;                                     /* 3 */
    %global number;
    %if &where=1 %then %do;
      %let number=%sysfunc(attrn(&dsid,nlobs));               /* 4 */
      %put &number OBSERVATIONS IN &dataset;
    %end;
    %else %do;
      %let number=%sysfunc(attrn(&dsid,nlobsf));              /* 5 */
      %put &number OBSERVATIONS IN &dataset WHERE &where;
    %end;
  %end;
  %else %do;
    %put %sysfunc(sysmsg());
  %end;
  %let dsid=%sysfunc(close(&dsid));                           /* 6 */
  %if &dsid=^0 %then %do;                                     /* 7 */
    %put THE DATASET: &dataset WAS NOT CLOSED;
  %end;
%mend dswhere;

Okay, there’s quite a lot going on here.  (1) Note the ‘cmd’ option in the %MACRO statement.  If the ‘cmdmac’ system option is turned on (this is a good one to throw into the OPTIONS statement in your autoexec file (don’t have an autoexec file?… well, there will surely be a future post for that)), and the ‘cmd’ option is included in the definition of a macro that contains only macro code and/or command statements, the macro may be called from the command line (I will deal with the innumerable benefits of the command line in a subsequent post – for now just take my word that this is a huge advantage).  (2) This is a biggie – the OPEN function is arguably the function that makes %SYSFUNC so powerful.  So, what’s the big deal?  Well, the depth and breadth of what can be achieved by the pairing of %SYSFUNC and the OPEN function cannot be addressed in a single post, but for now we’ll focus on the ability to use this combination to access metadata for our SAS data sets.  (3) If the data set has been successfully opened, the return code, saved in &dsid, will be a unique data set identifier.  If not, &dsid=0;  (4) Once a data set is open, the ATTRN function may be used to obtain certain numeric attributes associated with it (the ATTRC function may be similarly used for character attributes); in this case the ‘nlobs’ parameter indicates that the attribute to be returned is the number of logical observations in the data set.  (5) If the user has supplied a where clause, the ‘nlobsf’ parameter is fed into the ATTRN function to indicate that we wish to return the number of observations satisfying an active where clause (the data set will have been opened with the user-supplied where clause in place).  We could discard the  condition on whether or not the user supplied a where clause and simply always use ‘nlobsf’, but it causes ATTRN to be less efficient – better to only use it if we have to.  (6) The CLOSE function is used to, well, close the data set once we are done with it (this is important – don’t forget to close your data sets!).  (7) CLOSE returns 0 if the action was successful.

Now, let’s have an example of this puppy in action, shall we?

/* Create a testing data set with the variable var that randomly takes values of A or B */

data testing;
  do i=1 to 1000;
    if ranuni(-1) le .5 then do;
      var='A';
      output;
    end;
    else do;
      var='B';
      output;
    end;
  end;
run;

/* Call %dswhere without a where clause */

%dswhere(testing)

/* Call %dswhere with a where clause */

%dswhere(testing, where= var='A')

Upon execution of the above macro calls, the following is printed to the log:

1000 OBSERVATIONS IN testing
511 OBSERVATIONS IN testing WHERE var='A'

Note also that following execution of %DSWHERE the global macro variable &number will contain the result.  So, %DSWHERE can be used within a program to pass its result for further processing or from the command line as part of ad-hoc review.  I have %DSWHERE included in my macro autocall library (again, reserved for a subsequent post) so it is always available for command line use.

So, %SYSFUNC has allowed me to create a handy word-counting macro function and an observation-counting command/utility macro with subsetting capabilities that can be either embedded in a program or used interactively.  There is a lot more that can be achieved through the use of %SYSFUNC – I’m always finding new ways to use it, and I’m sure that many of them will be covered in subsequent posts.