With so much complexity and change in the marketplace, organizations worldwide are leveraging opportunities to make better predictions, identify solutions and take strategic, proactive steps forward – which means that they increasingly depend on big data. In their quest for organizational resilience, however, companies find that numbers aren’t necessarily the secret [...]
5 keys to building stronger analytics teams was published on SAS Voices by Catherine Truxillo
Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) is the Netherlands main agency for design, construction, management and maintenance for waterways and infrastructure. Their mission is to promote safety, mobility and quality of life in the Netherlands. They are the masterminds behind some of the most prestigious water projects in the world. In a recent panel [...]
A conversation with Rijkswaterstaat: How SAS is helping keep the Netherlands safe was published on SAS Voices by Olivia Ojeda
Just because you are using CAS actions doesn't mean you can forget about the powerful SAS DATA step. The dataStep.runCode CAS action is here!
Welcome back to my SAS Users blog series CAS Action! - a series on fundamentals. I've broken the series into logical, consumable parts. If you'd like to start by learning a little more about what CAS Actions are, please see CAS Actions and Action Sets - a brief intro. Or if you'd like to see other topics in the series, see the overview page.
In this example, I will use the CAS procedure to execute the dataStep.runCode CAS action. Be aware, instead of using the CAS procedure, I could execute the action with Python, R, or even a REST API with some slight changes to the syntax for the specific language.
It's pretty simple, the DATA step is a powerful way to process your data. It gives you full control of each row and column, ability to easily create multiple output tables, and provides a variety of statements to pretty much do anything you need.
In this example, I will use the DATA step to quickly create three CAS tables based on the value of a column. Before we execute the DATA step, let's view the frequency values of the Origin column in the cars table. To do that, I'll use the simple.freq action.
proc cas; simple.freq / table={name='cars', caslib='casuser'}, input='Origin'; quit; |
The result of the freq action shows that the Origin column in the cars CAS table has three distinct values: Asia, Europe and USA. I can use that information to create three CAS tables based off these unique values using the SAS DATA step.
One way to execute the DATA step directly in CAS is to use the runCode action with the code parameter. In the code parameter just specify the DATA step as a string. That's it!
In this example, I'll add the DATA step within a SOURCE block. The SOURCE block stores the code as variable. The DATA step code is stored in the variable originTables. This DATA step will create three CAS tables, one table for each unique value of the Origin column in the cars table.
proc cas; source originTables; data casuser.Asia casuser.Europe casuser.USA; set casuser.cars; if Origin='Asia' then output casuser.Asia; else if Origin='Europe' then output casuser.Europe; else if Origin='USA' then output casuser.USA; run; endsource; dataStep.runCode / code=originTables; quit; |
The runCode action executes the DATA step in the distributed CAS environment and returns information about the input and output tables. Notice three CAS tables were created: Asia, Europe and USA.
Now, one thing to be aware of is not all functionality of the DATA step is available in CAS. If you are using the runCode action with an unsupported statement or function in CAS, you will receive an error. Let's look at an example using the first function, which gets the first letter of a string, and is not supported in CAS.
proc cas; source originTables; data casuser.bad; set casuser.cars; NewCol=first(Model); run; endsource; dataStep.runCode / code=originTables; quit; |
The results of the runCode action return an error. The error occurs because the FIRST function is unknown or cannot be accessed. In situations like this you will need to find a CAS supported method to complete the task. (HINT: Here instead of the first function you can use the substr function).
For more information visit Restrictions and Supported Language Elements. Be sure to find the version of your SAS Viya environment.
In SAS Viya, the runCode action provides an easy way to execute most of the traditional DATA step in CAS in any language, from the CAS Language (CASL), to Python, R, Lua, Java and more.
runCode Action
DATA Step Action Set: Details
Restrictions and Supported Language Elements
SOURCE statement
SAS® Cloud Analytic Services: Fundamentals
Code
CAS-Action! Executing the SAS DATA Step in SAS Viya was published on SAS Users.
Just because you are using CAS actions doesn't mean you can forget about the powerful SAS DATA step. The dataStep.runCode CAS action is here!
Welcome back to my SAS Users blog series CAS Action! - a series on fundamentals. I've broken the series into logical, consumable parts. If you'd like to start by learning a little more about what CAS Actions are, please see CAS Actions and Action Sets - a brief intro. Or if you'd like to see other topics in the series, see the overview page.
In this example, I will use the CAS procedure to execute the dataStep.runCode CAS action. Be aware, instead of using the CAS procedure, I could execute the action with Python, R, or even a REST API with some slight changes to the syntax for the specific language.
It's pretty simple, the DATA step is a powerful way to process your data. It gives you full control of each row and column, ability to easily create multiple output tables, and provides a variety of statements to pretty much do anything you need.
In this example, I will use the DATA step to quickly create three CAS tables based on the value of a column. Before we execute the DATA step, let's view the frequency values of the Origin column in the cars table. To do that, I'll use the simple.freq action.
proc cas; simple.freq / table={name='cars', caslib='casuser'}, input='Origin'; quit; |
The result of the freq action shows that the Origin column in the cars CAS table has three distinct values: Asia, Europe and USA. I can use that information to create three CAS tables based off these unique values using the SAS DATA step.
One way to execute the DATA step directly in CAS is to use the runCode action with the code parameter. In the code parameter just specify the DATA step as a string. That's it!
In this example, I'll add the DATA step within a SOURCE block. The SOURCE block stores the code as variable. The DATA step code is stored in the variable originTables. This DATA step will create three CAS tables, one table for each unique value of the Origin column in the cars table.
proc cas; source originTables; data casuser.Asia casuser.Europe casuser.USA; set casuser.cars; if Origin='Asia' then output casuser.Asia; else if Origin='Europe' then output casuser.Europe; else if Origin='USA' then output casuser.USA; run; endsource; dataStep.runCode / code=originTables; quit; |
The runCode action executes the DATA step in the distributed CAS environment and returns information about the input and output tables. Notice three CAS tables were created: Asia, Europe and USA.
Now, one thing to be aware of is not all functionality of the DATA step is available in CAS. If you are using the runCode action with an unsupported statement or function in CAS, you will receive an error. Let's look at an example using the first function, which gets the first letter of a string, and is not supported in CAS.
proc cas; source originTables; data casuser.bad; set casuser.cars; NewCol=first(Model); run; endsource; dataStep.runCode / code=originTables; quit; |
The results of the runCode action return an error. The error occurs because the FIRST function is unknown or cannot be accessed. In situations like this you will need to find a CAS supported method to complete the task. (HINT: Here instead of the first function you can use the substr function).
For more information visit Restrictions and Supported Language Elements. Be sure to find the version of your SAS Viya environment.
In SAS Viya, the runCode action provides an easy way to execute most of the traditional DATA step in CAS in any language, from the CAS Language (CASL), to Python, R, Lua, Java and more.
runCode Action
DATA Step Action Set: Details
Restrictions and Supported Language Elements
SOURCE statement
SAS® Cloud Analytic Services: Fundamentals
Code
CAS-Action! Executing the SAS DATA Step in SAS Viya was published on SAS Users.
SQL is an important language for any programmer working with data. In SAS Cloud Analytic Services (CAS) you can execute SQL queries using the fedSQL.execDirect CAS action!
Welcome back to my SAS Users blog series CAS Action! - a series on fundamentals. I've broken the series into logical, consumable parts. If you'd like to start by learning a little more about what CAS Actions are, please see CAS Actions and Action Sets - a brief intro. Or if you'd like to see other topics in the series, see the overview page.
In this example, I will use the CAS procedure to execute the
proc cas; fedSQL.execDirect / query="select Make, Model, MSRP, mean(MPG_City,MPG_Highway) as MPG_Avg from casuser.cars where Make='Toyota' order by MPG_Avg desc"; quit; |
And the results:
The execDirect action executes the query in the distributed CAS environment and returns the expected results.
While the query we executed was simple, this is not always the case. Adding a complicated query as a string can make writing the query difficult.
Instead of specifying the query as a string in the CAS procedure, use the SOURCE statement to embed text in a variable. In the following example, I'll execute the same query as before. However, this time I'll nest the query inside a SOURCE block by specifying the SOURCE statement and name the variable MPG_toyota. Then I'll add the query inside the SOURCE block and use the ENDSOURCE statement to end the block.
proc cas; source MPG_toyota; select Make, Model, MSRP, mean(MPG_City,MPG_Highway) as MPG_Avg from casuser.cars where Make='Toyota' order by MPG_Avg desc; endsource; fedSQL.execDirect / query=MPG_toyota; quit; |
After the SOURCE block is complete, you can reference the variable as the value to the query parameter in the execDirect action.
And the results:
The results returned are the same, but using a SOURCE block makes the code easier to write and maintain.
In SAS Viya, FedSQL provides a scalable, threaded, high-performance way to query data and create new CAS tables from existing tables in the CAS server. In this example we saw two distinct ways to run SQL code on SAS Viya. This is only the beginning. See the resources below for more details on PROC FedSQL.
SAS® Viya®: FedSQL Programming for SAS® Cloud Analytic Services
FEDSQL Procedure
execDirect CAS Action
SOURCE statement
SAS® Cloud Analytic Services: Fundamentals
Code
CAS-Action! Executing SQL in SAS Viya was published on SAS Users.
In Part 1 of my series fetch CAS, fetch!, I executed the fetch CAS action to return rows from a CAS table. That was great, but what can you do with the results? Maybe you want to create a visualization that includes the top five cars by MSRP for all Toyota vehicles? How can we accomplish this task? We'll cover this question and provide several other examples in this post.
First, execute the table.fetch CAS action on the CARS in-memory table to filter for Toyota cars, return the Make, Model and MSRP columns, and sort the results by MSRP. Then save the results of the action in a variable using the results option. The results of an action return a dictionary to the client. The fetch action returns a dictionary with a single key, and the result table as the value. In this example, I'll name the variable toyota.
proc cas; table.fetch result=toyota / table={name="cars", caslib="casuser", where="Make='Toyota'", vars={"Make","Model","MSRP"} }, sortBy={ {name="MSRP", order="DESCENDING"} }, index=FALSE, to=5; ... |
After executing the code, the results of the action are stored in the variable toyota and not shown in the output.
Next, use the SAVERESULT statement to save the result table stored in the toyota variable. Since the variable is a dictionary, specify the variable name toyota, a dot, then the fetch key. This will access the result table from the dictionary. Finally, specify the DATAOUT= option with the name of the SAS data set to create.
proc cas; table.fetch result=toyota / table={name="cars", caslib="casuser", where="Make='Toyota'", vars={"Make","Model","MSRP"} }, sortBy={ {name="MSRP", order="DESCENDING"} }, index=FALSE, to=5; saveresult toyota.fetch dataout=work.top5; quit; |
After executing the code, the result table is saved as a SAS data set. The SAS data set is named top5 and saved to the WORK library.
Wondering what else can we do? Let's take a look.
Now that the result table is saved as a SAS data set, you can use the SGPLOT procedure to create a bar chart! Consider the code below.
title justify=left height=14pt "Top 5 Toyota Cars by MSRP"; proc sgplot data=work.top5 noborder nowall; vbar Model / response=MSRP categoryorder=respdesc nooutline fillattrs=(color=cx0379cd); label MSRP="MSRP"; quit; title; |
There it is! We processed our data in CAS using the fetch action, returned a smaller subset of results back to the client, then used traditional SAS programming techniques on the smaller table. This method will work similarly in other languages like Python and R. Then you can then use the native visualization packages of the language!
You can now use your imagination on what else to do with the raw data from the CARS table or from the top5 results table we produced with the table.fetch action. Feel free to get creative.
CAS actions are optimized to run in a distributed environment on extremely large tables. Your CAS table can contain millions or even billions of rows. Since the data in CAS can be extremely large, the goal is to process and subset the table on the CAS server, then return a smaller amount of data to the client for additional processing, visualization or modeling.
fetch Action
SAVERESULT Statement
SAS® Cloud Analytic Services: Fundamentals
Plotting a Cloud Analytic Services (CAS) In-Memory Table
Getting started with SGPLOT - Index
Code used in this post
CAS-Action! fetch CAS, fetch! - Part 2 was published on SAS Users.
Small and midsize (SMB) manufacturers are critical drivers of innovation and productivity, and agility often gives them a competitive advantage over larger organizations. But they have unique challenges compared to larger manufacturers who have the resources and capital to achieve greater economies of scale. To take advantage of their agility, [...]
An analytics how-to for small and midsize manufacturers was published on SAS Voices by Loren Sylvan
Small and midsize (SMB) manufacturers are critical drivers of innovation and productivity, and agility often gives them a competitive advantage over larger organizations. But they have unique challenges compared to larger manufacturers who have the resources and capital to achieve greater economies of scale. To take advantage of their agility, [...]
An analytics how-to for small and midsize manufacturers was published on SAS Voices by Loren Sylvan
Ready to turn big data into big business insights? Look to the cloud.
The post Why it's hard to say "big data" without saying "cloud" appeared first on The Data Roundtable.
It’s safe to say that SAS Global Forum is a conference designed for users, by users. As your conference chair, I am excited by this year’s top-notch user sessions. More than 150 sessions are available, many by SAS users just like you. Wherever you work or whatever you do, you’ll find sessions relevant to your industry or job role. New to SAS? Been using SAS forever and want to learn something new? Managing SAS users? We have you covered. Search for sessions by industry or topic, then add those sessions to your agenda and personal calendar.
Besides two full days of amazing sessions, networking opportunities and more, many user sessions will be available on the SAS Users YouTube channel on May 20, 2021 at 10:00am ET. After you register, build your agenda and attend the sessions that most interest you when the conference begins. Once you’ve viewed a session, you can chat with the presenter. Don’t know where to start? Sample agendas are available in the Help Desk.
For the first time, proceedings will live on SAS Support Communities. Presenters have been busy adding their papers to the community. Everything is there, including full paper content, video presentations, and code on GitHub. It all premiers on “Day 3” of the conference, May 20. Have a question about the paper or code? You’ll be able to post a question on the community and ask the presenter.
Code Doctors are back this year. Check out the agenda for the specific times they’re available and make your appointment, so you’ll be sure to catch them and get their diagnosis of code errors. If you’re looking for training, you’ll be quite happy. Training is also back this year and it’s free! SAS instructor-led demos will be available on May 20, along with the user presentations on the SAS Users YouTube channel.
It is hard to replicate the buzz of a live conference, but we’ve tried our best to make you feel like you’re walking the conference floor. And we know networking is always an important component to any conference. We’ve made it possible for you to network with colleagues and SAS employees. Simply make your profile visible (by clicking on your photo) to connect with others, and you can schedule a meeting right from the attendee page. That’s almost easier than tracking down someone during the in-person event.
We know the exhibit hall is also a big draw for many attendees. This year’s Innovation Hub (formerly known as The Quad) has industry-focused booths and technology booths, where you can interact in real-time with SAS experts. There will also be a SAS Lounge where you can learn more about various SAS services and platforms such as SAS Support Communities and SAS Analytics Explorers.
I’ve highlighted a lot in this blog post, but I encourage you to view this 7-minute Innovation Hub video. It goes in depth on the Hub and all its features.
This year there is no reason not to register for SAS Global Forum…and attend as few or as many sessions as you want. Why? Because the conference is FREE!
Where else can you get such quality SAS content and learning opportunities? Nowhere, which is why I encourage you to register today. See you soon!
SAS Global Forum: Your experience, your way was published on SAS Users.