Call for Papers

GVSUG is looking for a few good talks!

We hope you will consider submitting a talk to be given at our October, 2005 meeting. We are looking for papers that cover any SAS topic of interest, and we particularly would like to see one or more talks at a beginner level. So if you have something interesting to talk about, please submit your abstract here. Thanks!

Ten Commandments of SAS Programming

The Missing SemiColon, a SAS newsletter published by Systems Seminar Consultants, Inc., brings you “Thou Shall … Program Efficiencies”. (Link via The Unofficial SAS Weblog)

Thou shalt read and obey!

EXCEL Engine

What’s troubling you, my friend? You say you have an Excel spreadsheet with 18 tabs and you need to read the data from all of them, and you’re too lazy to write 18 different PROC IMPORTs? I can sympathize. However, the EXCEL engine in the LIBNAME statement can come to your rescue.

LIBNAME mylibrary EXCEL 'c:\myExcelFile.xls' header=yes;

Now, you have 18 SAS data sets, one for each tab. To access them, you will need to turn on the option VALIDVARNAME=ANY. If the first tab was named Sheet1, the equivalent SAS data set is named 'mylibrary.Sheet1$'n.

Try it!

PharmaSUG ’05 Recap

Written by Kenneth Borowiak

The Pharmaceutical SAS Users Group (PharmaSUG) was held in Phoenix, Arizona, May 22–25, 2005 (excluding some pre- and post-conference activities) at the Pointe South Mountain Resort. In addition to the 110 degree weather, attendees were enlightened by talks in tracks such as FDA Compliance, Applications Development, Data Management and Technical Techniques. SAS Users were able to mingle at events like the opening night dinner, the SAS Institute sponsored mixer in the demonstration room, and game-night (which included beach volleyball).

GVSUG member Bill Csont contributed a poster to PharmaSUG ’05 on his paper titled “Icon Do It!”. In the paper, he describes how to create various SAS icons that can be placed on a Windows desktop that can be useful for multiple SAS sessions or different SAS setups. You can search and view all PharmaSUG papers from 2000–2005 at LexJansen.com or follow the PharmaSUG link on this website.

Stay tuned for details on PharmaSUG ’06 in Bonita Springs, Florida next May.

What’s Wrong With Pie Charts, Anyway?

Recently, we lambasted SAS for provided tools for a very mis-leading graphic, the three-dimensional pie chart. Now, a discussion has broken out about what is wrong with the ordinary two-dimensional version of a pie chart. The summary: bar charts or dot charts are easier to read and get the point across better than the corresponding two-dimensional pie chart.