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RATCLIFFE Technical Services Limited |
NOTE: |
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Issue 11. January 2003 |
Hints, tips, and experience for SAS(r) users |
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Welcome to issue 11 of NOTE:. When we started NOTE: two years ago we knew that there was a demand for technical knowledge about SAS software that was not being met, but we did not anticipate the scale of the popularity of NOTE: that we currently see. In each issue we endeavour to provide a mixture of topics and themes, reflecting some of the diversity of uses to which SAS software can be put. NOTE:'s list of subscribers now exceeds 4,000 SAS practitioners. In honour of NOTE:'s success, we have given it its own web domain (www.NoteColon.info). The topics in this issue range from a case story about our use of Futrix for business intelligence, through to in-depth technical articles about macros and audit trails. Plus, RTSL is based in the UK so we provide a report on the state of the UK's independent user group. If you enjoy reading NOTE:, please let others know, and encourage them to subscribe. -Andrew Ratcliffe |
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A practical case-study on the use of Futrix Express |
We all know that SAS is one of the best tools for accessing, collating, manipulating, storing, and analysing data, but sometimes it comes in useful in unexpected circumstances. This article describes one of those unusual circumstances - in this case within the pharmaceutical industry. Our clients were in the business of analysing clinical trial data. Each project involved writing between 50 and 100 base SAS programs to produce the same number of tables, listings, or graphs. After each program had been completed to the satisfaction of its programmer, best clinical practice was followed by having another programmer quality-check the output and the code, and then a statistician would perform a final check of the output. To keep track of each program's progress through this process, including the potential of failure at either type of review, the clients used a spreadsheet. At a detailed operational level, the spreadsheet was very successful. However, if project managers, or the departmental manager, wanted an overview of progress, the overview would always be based upon a team member's finger-in-the-air opinion. The facts in the spreadsheet were ignored because no quick summary was available. When RTSL was contracted to help the client get a particularly large and problematic project back on track (involving 7 sets of 100+ programs) we realised that some factual reporting of progress was in order. Equally, it was apparent that the spreadsheets represented just a snapshot of the status of the project at a given time - no historical information was known - such as the rate of progress. We quickly built a small prototype set of base SAS programs that could be used to read the separate spreadsheets and to build a repository of dated information. The programs could be run daily, the information would be appended to the repository, and a useful source of management information was built. In conjunction with the daily data loads, the programs produced graphic output showing trend and current status information. The graphs were linked into HTML pages to produce a series of static reports that were accessible to anybody with a browser. This information proved useful to many members of the team. The trend information was useful not just for management, but as a motivating factor for the technical team members too. However, inevitably, more information produced more questions such as "what progress are we making with the programs in report section X?" and "is the queue of programs awaiting programmer review increasing or decreasing?" With an increasing demand for more information, we needed to provide an interactive means of answering the increasingly detailed questions - it wasn't practical to keep increasing the number of static reports delivered via HTML pages. Having faced this situation before, we knew exactly how to quickly (almost instantly) provide a solution. We downloaded and installed the free Futrix Express from www.futrix.com. Futrix Express (and its feature-rich commercial counterpart, Futrix) provides the most cost-effective means of viewing your "multi-dimensional" data in interactive graphical or tabular form. With its ability to store report definitions in a library accessible to all users, Futrix Express allowed us to quickly replicate the static graphs. Using these as starting points, the users could then create further graphs and tables of information on demand - they were no longer restricted to the static output that was pre-programmed. Users could click on an area of interest (such as report section X) and "drill-down" to that area to get a more detailed view. The code that was used as a basis for this work was written purely as a prototype to quickly demonstrate what could be achieved. We subsequently presented some options to the clients that included replacing the spreadsheets with a validated data entry system, collecting information into the repository from project teams around the UK, and making the information available through thin clients as well as thick clients - Futrix Express is written with SAS/AF and thus needs a thick client, whereas Futrix offers a (thin) web client interface. So, this is just one example of SAS proving itself useful in unexpected (niche) circumstances. And it is a prime example of how Futrix Express can deliver tremendous value with no financial outlay. Of course, if you want the full features of Futrix you'll have to pay: Futrix offers a wide range of administrative features such as security and data-store optimisation, plus usability features such as multi-level reports libraries (containing personal reports plus departmental reports). For more information on Futrix and Futrix Express, visit www.futrix.com. To discuss with us how we could extract useful information from your detailed operational data, contact RTSL sales on +44-1322-525672 or sales@ratcliffe.co.uk, we would be glad to help you. |
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ASAP and other SAS-related products |
We continue to be busy as international distributors for complementSoft's ASAP. The range of products now includes Clinical Trial Reporting Templates. NEW PRODUCTS FOR THE CATALOG Do you have a commercial SAS-related software product that could benefit SAS users world-wide? We'd like to discuss the possibility of adding it to our catalog. If your software is not yet business-strength, talk to us anyway, we can help you walk that final distance and get your product to market world-wide. |
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Is traceability important to you? |
Maintaining correct, consistent data is critical for most SAS customers. Two features in base SAS, integrity constraints and audit trails, can be used to control and monitor updates to SAS data sets. The first of these - integrity constraints - was discussed back in issue #1 of NOTE:. Integrity constraints (ICs) enable you to create rules that tell SAS software about the valid content of variables in data sets. SAS will honour these rules when data isadded, updated or deleted in a data set, and they also link the data in one data set to data in another. ICs guarantee the consistency and correctness of your data. The second feature is audit trails. The audit trail is an optional SAS file that makes records of modifications made to a SAS data set. Each time an observation is added, deleted or updated, information is written to the audit trail about who made the modification, what was modified and when the modification took place. Audit trails maintain historical information about data so that usage statistics and patterns can be developed. The historical information allows you to monitor and analyse individual pieces of data from the moment they are entered into the data file until they are removed from the file. The audit trail also stores a) observations from failed append operations, and b) observations that were rejected by integrity constraints. PROC DATASETS' AUDIT statement allows you to define your data set's audit trail. This causes an additional SAS "data set" to be created with a member-type of "audit". The following example demonstrates the basics:
The PROC PRINT output is shown below:
The op-codes indicate that the rows show before-images (DR) and after-images (DW) of the observation. For more information, refer to the SUGI 25 paper by Gary Franklin and Art Jensen from SAS: Integrity Constraints and Audit Trails Working Together: www2.sas.com/proceedings/sugi25/25/aa/25p008.pdf. Note one little "gotcha" pointed-out to us by our good friend DW, the audit data set is automatically deleted if you sort the original data set. Beware! |
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| Whither VIEWS? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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What happened to the UK's independent user group? |
VIEWS was formed back in 1996 by a group of UK-based SAS practitioners who mourned the absence of a technically-focused event for like-minded people to share knowledge of SAS software. Independent of SAS Institute, but with its full support, VIEWS grew substantially over time. Its activities included a quarterly newsletter, themed and focused events with international invited speakers, and an annual conference that, in 2001, featured three streams over two days. But in 2002, only the newsletter survived - there were no events at all - and it looked like SAS Institute's new-found interest in controlling such events had stymied VIEWS' efforts. But, good news is on the horizon. The Views Conference is back on the exhibition agenda. The Views 2003 Conference will be on Tuesday 20th May 2003 at the Commonwealth Conference and Events Centre, Kensington High Street in London. Suggested streams this year are:
This year's conference is planned to be bigger, brighter, more informative, more independent and more valuable than ever before. Planned activities include networking, education centre, question and answer booth, papers, demonstrations, tutorials, quizzes, themed lunch, mixer session, coders corner, CD proceedings, software and hardware vendor exhibitions, new software directions, 3rd party add on products and services, alternative and competitive products, and much, much more. The VIEWS conference will give attendees the opportunity for over 20 hours of education in one day, with access to industry experts, independent consultants and a focus on technical aspects of SAS and other products such as Splus, Oracle, VB.NET, Perl, Excel, SQL Server. Present a paper and get 50% off the registration fee. The VIEWS committee are looking for people to present papers on all aspects of their work, at all levels. Send your abstract, maximum 200 words, to events@views-uk.org by 1st March 2003. Up to date information is posted on the Views web site at www.views-uk.org. The delegate registration fee for Views 2003 is £135 plus VAT per delegate, £70 plus VAT for a paper presenter and £20 plus VAT for a student. Sponsorship options (first come, first served) are:
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You can never know enough! |
If you yearn to know more about SAS software, try these additional sources of good advice and information. Richard DeVenezia, independent consultant with useful papers and utilities - www.devenezia.com/ Washington DC SAS User Group (DCSUG) also offer plenty of papers - www.ita.doc.gov/td/industry/otea/dcsug/ Hartford Area SAS Users Grouo (HASUG), publish the HASUG flash - www.hasug.org |
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Just one of many useful tools from Qualex |
Qualex have just significantly updated their popular SAS tool, Exporter. More exported file formats and new features make Exporter much more effective. Exporter now supports the following formats:
Features include exporting all or selected data set variables. You can export a range or random number of records. Data sets may be sorted and variables rearranged. PROC PRINT statements are supported for some formats. With all these features, Exporter can be useful for creating cut-down test data sets, for creating printed output from SAS data sets, and for passing SAS data to those not blessed with the ability to use SAS. The new version of Exporter is available for SAS V8.2 for Windows only and Qualex say that it has been tested under Windows 98, 2000, and XP. MS-Excel is required in order to export to XLS format. Exporter is free for personal use only. For more information including a complete list of features and downloading instructions, go to www.qlx.com/exporter.htm. |
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SAS(r) With Style - Structured Macros |
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The safe way to use macros |
Many people are afraid of macros. Indeed, I've even heard the use of macros compared with herding cats: hard work and ultimately futile. I share some sympathy with those who place macros closer to the house of Slytherin than that of Gryffindor. But, with careful use of macros, your programs can become more manageable and efficient; more easily maintained and understood. The secret to effective use of macros is good design. Your macros each need a good clear purpose, and they each need a good clean interface, i.e. a defined set of parameters. Macros are ideal for handling something that needs to be done more than once, but the trick is to clearly understand what the "something" is and to properly define what the parameters are that influence how "something" is done. For a more detailed discussion of this topic, try Ian Whitlock's SUGI 27 paper SAS Macro Design Issues at www2.sas.com/proceedings/sugi27/p067-27.pdf |
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Advertisement |
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This diary provides a guide to some of the world-wide events we might like to attend. If you visit any of the listed events, please send us an email and let us know what you thought of it. |
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May 2003 June 2003 |
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You can subscribe and unsubscribe by visiting our web site at www.ratcliffe.co.uk. Or, to subscribe just click here and hit the Send button in your email client; and to unsubscribe, just click here and hit the Send button in your email client. Please do not include a message in the body of the email, it will not be seen by a human! Back issues are available from the archive at www.NoteColon.info. Please send comments to note.editor@ratcliffe.co.uk. NOTE:
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