Business Analytics with SAS Studio: Deliver Business Intelligence by Combining SQL Processing, Insightful Visualizations, and Various Data Mining Techniques

By Rajinder Kr. Chitoria

This book teaches readers how to properly use SAS (R) Studio to enhance business analytics summaries and graphical reports to make more informed business decisions. Since the examples in the book are laid out in a logical sequence, no prior knowledge is required to get started with implementing what you learn in them.

The book begins with configuring your SAS® OnDemand instance, complete with sample datasets and scripts. The book explains programming syntaxes before delving into sophisticated programming principles for managing data values and concludes with creating graphical reports for business data values. It explores how to implement datasets, read external files, execute conditional statements, loops, formats, text, date, numeric functions, and arrays. The book also helps writing SQL Statements such as joins, sets, index, views, etc. with Proc SQL, Univariate (PROC MEAN, PROC FREQ), Multivariate (PROC FREQ), and Design Graphs with the help of PROC SGPLOT.

After reading this book, readers will be able to evaluate business data values and create excellent visualizations that will assist enterprises in making more informed business decisions. Readers will become confident to use SAS Studio's rich interface and develop analytical programs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BPB Online LLP
• Release date: Feb 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9789391392802

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Introducing SAS Environment

This chapter is focused on setting up and configuring the Statistical Analysis Software ( SAS ) University Edition to do future programming using Base SAS Language. Base SAS is a highly improvised programming language to execute various data access, transformation, and a reporting-related operation in SAS Studio.

Structure

In this chapter, we will discuss the following topics:

Getting introduced with SAS

Key features of SAS Studio 9.4 Editor

Downloading and installing SAS software (University Edition)

Objective

After studying this chapter, you will be able to understand the basic features of SAS as Analysis Software. You will also learn the steps to download and install SAS Software (University Edition).

Getting introduced with SAS

SAS stands for Statistical Analysis Software. It was launched in the year 1960 by SAS Institute. From January 1, 1960, SAS was used for data management, business intelligence, predictive analysis, descriptive and prescriptive analysis, etc. Since then, many new statistical procedures and components have been added to enhance the usage of this tool. Now, it becomes a Gold Standard for most of the statistical calculations. Being platform independent, a SAS programmer can code using either Linux or Windows.

The SAS software suite has 200+ components to perform different tasks. Some of the key components are as follows:

*Referred from Wikipedia.org

Table 1.1: SAS Software Suite Components

SAS Studio gives a web browser-based programming interface for the programmers. With the ease of interfaces, the programmers use SAS Studio for an effective and fast programming experience.

Key features for SAS Studio

The following are the key features of SAS Studio software to enable the SAS Analytics operators:

Integrated development environment: It allows the programmer to easily access programs, codes, data files, tables, and libraries from a single interface. It offers a more efficient programming experience with autocomplete, syntax help, color coding, keyword shortcuts, and many more code handling techniques.

Flexible task environment: It includes an extensive library of pre-built tasks available as code snippets which helps the programmer to use the code repository to save time.

Flexible development options: The SAS Server can be hosted in a cloud, in company data center, or on your individual laptop with no changes to SAS Studio interface. The SAS Studio interface is consistent regardless of the development environment.

Security: Centralized security policies can be defined to control the data and file access of the users.

Need no client installation: It is accessible via a web browser if hosted on server/cloud.

The SAS Studio interface layout can be customized and saved for next subsequent logins.

Setting up the SAS® OnDemand for Academics: Studio

Key benefits of SAS® OnDemand for Academics: Studio are as follows:

Quick startup: Being on cloud, no local machine installation is needed. You can start using SAS Studio OnDemand Solution within a couple of minutes.

Cloud access: It enables anytime-anywhere access of SAS Studio Solution.

Easy to use: You can effortlessly manage the environment files and upload new files if needed.

Access to e-learning: Here, you can access world-class free e-learning course content to learn Data Analytics on SAS Studio Environment.

Step to setup OnDemand Cloud Access

SAS OnDemand Cloud solution is free for use solution for academicians and new learners, which is good enough for learning SAS programming. It provides most of the features that you need to learn the BASE SAS programming concepts with other SAS components. You will be using this SAS Tool for learning SAS programming in this book.

Refer to the following steps to configure the SAS OnDemand Cloud Solution access:

SAS OnDemand Cloud Solution is available for free configuration. You can start setting up the free SAS User Profit. Refer to the following URL for instructions and click on Get started with SAS OnDemand for Academics button to proceed as shown in Figure 1.1:

https://www.sas.com/en_in/software/university-edition/download-software.html

Figure 1.1: Home page screen for configuring the SAS OnDemand Solution for Academics

You will be redirected to the following URL (refer Figure 1.2):

https://www.sas.com/en_in/software/on-demand-for-academics/references/getting-started-with-sas-ondemand-for-academics-studio.html

Figure 1.2: Redirected page for details regarding SAS OnDemand Solutions

On scrolling downward, you find the following instructions to configure the SAS Solution:

Figure 1.3: Snapshot of key benefits of SAS OnDemand Solution for new learner

Follow step 1 instructions and click on the SAS profile link given. You will be redirected to a new URL to complete new user registration process. Fill the required details (refer Figure 1.4).

Figure 1.4: Part-1 of user registration screen

Click the Create Profile button after checking relevant checkboxes given to complete the registration process (refer Figure 1.5):

Figure 1.5: Part-2 of user registration screen

After successful completion of the previous step, go to the following URL to log into the solutions, fill the required credentials and click the Sign In button after checking the Accept the terms of the license and the term of use and conditions checkbox (refer Figure 1.6):

https://welcome.oda.sas.com/login

Figure 1.6: Login screen for SAS OnDemand Solution

After successful sign-in, you will be redirected to the following page for configuring the home region from the list given. In this case, I have selected Asia Pacific region. Click the Submit button to proceed (refer Figure 1.7):

Figure 1.7: User home region confirmation for align localized services

On successful submission, you will get the following confirmation page stating confirmation of successful submission of your request for SAS Solution access. Click the Exit button and wait for the email from SAS company for confirmation on activation of your user profile to access SAS OnDemand solution access (refer Figure 1.8):

Figure 1.8: Sign-up request submission confirmation

You are expected to get an email similar to the one shown in Figure 1.9 with confirmation of user login ID. You can continue using your existing credentials to access the solution instead of using a new login ID:

Figure 1.9: Email confirmation for activation of SAS OnDemand Service

Browse the following URL to login again to access OnDemand SAS Solution as shown in Figure 1.10:

https://welcome.oda.sas.com/login

Figure 1.10: Login screen to start SAS OnDemand Solution

On successful login, you will be getting the following screen as shown in Figure 1.11 with a link of SAS Studio. Click on the link to start the SAS Studio environment; it may take a couple of minutes to setup your environment:

Figure 1.11: Home screen of SAS OnDemand Solution

On successful configuration of SAS Setup, you will get the following screen of SAS Studio as shown in Figure 1.12, which you can use to test and learn SAS programming:

Figure 1.12: SAS Studio interface preview

Acquainting with SAS user interface

SAS main window

Figure 1.13 displays the window you see when entering the SAS environment. The Navigation Pane used to navigate different programming features is to the left. To the right is the area of work that is used to write and execute the code:

Figure 1.13: SAS Studio interface screen

Code autocomplete

This is a very useful function that helps to get the right SAS keyword syntax as well as linking to the keyword documentation (refer Figure 1.14):

Figure 1.14: Code auto-completion example snapshot

Program execution

Code execution is achieved by pressing the run key, which is either the first left icon or the F3 button (refer Figure 1.15):

Figure 1.15: Program execution process image

Program log

The log of the executed code can be found under the Log tab. This explains the implementation of the program's mistakes, alerts, or observations. This is the window where all the clues for troubleshooting your code are given (refer Figure 1.16):

Figure 1.16: Execution log screenshot

Program result

The result of the code execution is seen in the RESULTS tab. By default, they are formatted as html tables (refer Figure 1.17):

Figure 1.17: Program result screen with data output

Program tabs

The Navigation area has roles for designing and maintaining services. It also provides the pre-constructed functionalities to use with your software:

Server files and folders: We may create additional programs under this tab, import data to be analyzed and query existing data. This may also be used to build shortcuts to directories (refer Figure 1.18):