From: "basugwm" Subject: BASUG (event #1): Quarterly Meeting Announcement (June 1st) Date: Mon, 9 May 2005 22:20:12 +0000 NOTE: This is the first of two BASUG announcements for two seperate events. This one is for a half-day Quarterly Meeting. ============================================================================ ====== The Boston Area SAS(r) Users Group Quarterly Meeting June 1, 2005. Do you feel comfortable with your basic coding skills, but want to refine your work? Would you like to better understand the RETAIN statement or to use formats? Would you like to know more about parameterizing your programs using macros or the new version 9 character functions? The "Sophomore SAS" meeting is for you. These presentations are for anybody who has a basic understanding of the SAS Data Step. More experienced programmers can take advantage of the expertise of our presenters to further refine their coding skills. There will also be raffles of four of Ron Cody's books. TOPIC: "Sophomore" SAS. WHEN: Friday, June 1, 2005, 8:15AM to 12:00PM WHERE: Holiday Inn - Newton (Directions are included below) 399 Grove Street Newton, MA 02462 617-969-5300 AGENDA: 8:15 - 8:45 - Sign in and Refreshments 8:45 - 9:00 - Meeting Announcements 9:00 - 9:25 - "When Good Formats Go Bad", by Carlo Radovsky 9:25 - 10:25 - "An Introduction to SAS Character Functions", by Ron Cody 10:25 - 10:45 - BREAK/First Raffle Drawing 10:45 - 11:10 - "Uses and Abuses of the Retain Statement", by Vanessa Hayden 11:10 - 11:55 - "How to Parameterize Your SAS Program", by Charles Patridge 11:55 - 12:00 - Thank-yous and Final Raffle Drawing LEVEL: This meeting is appropriate for anyone with a basic understanding of the SAS DATA step, but will also be of interest to more advanced SAS users. INDIVIDUAL, ON-LINE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. NO EMAIL! To register, visit: http://www.basug.org/register.php3 CONTACT: If you have questions about the meeting contact: Vanessa Hayden: vchayden@yahoo.com MEMBERSHIP: Keep your BASUG Membership up-to-date! Print out a membership form from our website, and bring it with you to the meeting (along with your check). Please note that we have discontinued Corporate Memberships - we now provide only Individual Membership at $25 annually. For more information on our membership policy, or to print out a form visit: http://www.basug.org/basugj.shtml ABSTRACTS AND BIOGRAPHIES: An Introduction to SAS Character Functions (Including some new V9 functions) by Ron Cody ABSTRACT: SASŪ software is especially rich in its assortment of functions that deal with character data. This class of functions is sometimes called STRING functions. With over 30 new character functions in Version 9, the power of SAS to manipulate character data is even more impressive. Some of the functions we will discuss are: LENGTH, SUBSTR, COMPBL, COMPRESS, VERIFY, INPUT, PUT, TRANWRD, SCAN, TRIM, UPCASE, LOWCASE, REPEAT, || (concatenation), INDEX, INDEXC, AND SOUNDEX. Some of the new and exciting Version 9 functions that we will cover are the "ANY' and "NOT" functions, the concatenation functions (and call routines), COMPARE, INDEXW, LENGTHC, PROPCASE, STRIP, and COUNT. Biography: An Introduction to SAS Character Functions (Including some new V9 functions) SASŪ software is especially rich in its assortment of functions that deal with character data. This class of functions is sometimes called STRING functions. With over 30 new character functions in Version 9, the power of SAS to manipulate character data is even more impressive. Some of the functions we will discuss are: LENGTH, SUBSTR, COMPBL, COMPRESS, VERIFY, INPUT, PUT, TRANWRD, SCAN, TRIM, UPCASE, LOWCASE, REPEAT, || (concatenation), INDEX, INDEXC, AND SOUNDEX. Some of the new and exciting Version 9 functions that we will cover are the "ANY' and "NOT" functions, the concatenation functions (and call routines), COMPARE, INDEXW, LENGTHC, PROPCASE, STRIP, and COUNT. BIOGRAPHY: Dr. Ron Cody was a Professor at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey for 26 years and is now a private consultant and writer. He has been a SAS user since the late 70's and is the author of "Applied Statistics and the SASŪ Programming Language" (fourth edition), published by Prentice Hall. He has also authored or co-authored the following books for the SAS Institute as part of their Books by Users series: SAS Functions by Example (just published), The SAS Workbook, SAS Programming by Example, Cody's Data Cleaning Techniques, and Longitudinal Data and SAS: A Programmer's Guide. Ron has presented invited papers for numerous local, regional, and national SAS conferences. When Good Formats Go Bad By Carlo Radovsky ABSTRACT: Formats allow you to perform a variety of essential tasks in SASŪ, and the ability to store them in catalogs for future use is indispensable. When not handled properly, however, they can also lead to a range of problems, from not being able to process a dataset to the apparent miscoding of data. After touching on some formatting tips and tricks, we will go through the relationship between formats and datasets, and the use of various SASŪ options that determine how formats are processed. These include FMTERR/NOFMTERR, FMTSEARCH, and the uses of CATNAME versus LIBNAME. BIOGRAPHY: Carlo Radovsky has worked with SAS for 18 years in a variety of industries, primarily pharmaceutical where he has bridged both the Biostatistics and Data Management departments. He currently works as a Principal Statistical Programmer/Analyst at Serono. Uses and Abuses of the RETAIN Statement by Vanessa Hayden ABSTRACT: The RETAIN statement is one of the more widely misunderstood statements used by SAS(r) programmers. Used properly, it is a powerful tool that allows you to program otherwise difficult algorithms. Used improperly, it is an unnecessarily complicated bit of code that can lead to buggy programs and erroneous results. This talk will provide a brief overview of how the RETAIN statement works and some guidance on deciding how and when to use RETAIN. BIOGRAPHY: Vanessa Hayden is an independent SAS programmer/consultant currently working in the Boston area. She has almost fifteen years of experience programming SAS in a variety of settings including pharmaceuticals, health care, banking and finance, database marketing, and institutional research. Having dug into a lot of old, buggy code, she would like to set the record straight on a few points about the proper use of the RETAIN statement. How to Parameterize Your SAS Program by Charles Patridge ABSTRACT: Many times, beginning SAS(r) programmers develop their programs to perform a task assigned to them without much of any consideration as to how their creation will change in the future due to the ever changing needs of their management and/or environment. As such, many of these beginning SAS programmers will "cut and paste" their prior creations into "new" creations to formulate another solution based upon what they have already created to answer a new but similar business problem. Afterwards, we end up with a series of similar, yet slightly different SAS programs which become harder to maintain as we move forward into creating more "similar" programs. What happens when the very basic component of our original program has to change due to data changes or another application is created with similar needs? Clone our existing programs to another directory, make a series of changes to all of our program code, setup new filename(s) or libname(s), and then "Voila", we are ready to go! Reflection or spending a little more time on the very first SAS program, and thinking about what could change on the next request, how could I use the same program to answer a new question without changing the original code? Officiously, this presentation "_How to Parameterize Your SAS Program_" will walk you through a simple SAS program, make a few changes to answer new problem(s), evolve the same program so that it can answer a variety of questions. And finally, ending up with a program that can be used over and over again by many applications resulting in a "Plug-N-Play" methodology of developing future applications. Sit back, clear your thoughts, take a deep breath, and open your mind to doing things differently! I hope you can see the potential of parameterizing your SAS programs. BIOGRAPHY: Chuck has been using SAS since 1979 in various positions, companies and consulting assignments. He has worked for Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Co., LIMRA, CIGNA, Aetna, Coldwell Banker Relocation, Bayer Inc., SNETCO, State of Connecticut, Automobile Association of British Columbia, United States Postal Service, Australian Federal Health Insurance Commission, Australian Government, Applied Psychological Techniques, Alan K. Campbell Public Affairs Institute, Arthur Andersen Consulting, Paine Webber, The Hartford Financial Services and currently, for Deloitte Consulting performing Predictive Modeling. In addition, he operates his own company (PDPC, Ltd.) specializing in SAS and ?fuzzy merge? applications as well as statistical analysis in a variety of industries. His area of SAS expertise lies in BASE, STAT, AF, FSP, Macros, and ETS. He is the original founder of HASUG in 1983 and currently a member of its steering committee, founder and director of SAS CONSIG (Consultant Special Interest Group), creator and Webmaster for SAS CONSIG web site. He has presented numerous papers and speaking engagements to HASUG, BASUG, NYSUG, NESUG and SUGI as well as presentations at the Institute for Graphic Communications. Since March 1994, Chuck has been informally operatoring a network (now on the Internet) to link companies, agencies, consultants and SAS professionals with contracts and full time positions. To date, his efforts has directly and indirectly placed over 180 individuals with assignments throughout the United States and overseas. The Internet address to make his effort successful is http://www.sconsig.com. He holds a BS in Mathematics from Central Connecticut State University, 45 hrs of graduate studies in Statistics, completed parts I & II of the Society of Actuaries, HIAA and LOMA exams. ======================================================================== DIRECTIONS DRIVING: FROM BOSTON: Take I-90 West to Exit 15, then take Route 128 South (I-95)1/4 mile to Exit 22. When you exit, stay right and bear right at the fork onto Grove Street. Hotel is on your left. FROM SOUTH OF BOSTON: Take Route 128 North (I-95) to Exit 22. When you exit, stay right and bear right at the fork onto Grove Street. Hotel is on your left. FROM WESTERN MASS: Take I-90 East to Exit 14, then take Route 128 South (I-95) 1/4 mile to Exit 22. When you exit, stay right and bear right at the fork onto Grove Street. Hotel is on your left. FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE: Take I-93 South to Route 128 South (I-95), follow for approximately 15 miles to Exit 22. When you exit, stay right and bear right at the fork onto Grove Street. Hotel is on your left. FROM RHODE ISLAND: Take I-95 North to Route 128 North (I-95). Follow to Exit 22. When you exit, stay right and bear right at the fork onto Grove Street. Hotel is on your left. PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION: The hotel is adjacent to the Riverside T Station. From Kenmore Square take the Green Line - D (Riverside) to the Riverside stop. Hotel is adjacent to the T Station. The hotel is also accessible from downtown Boston via Express Bus #500 (EXPRESS BUS Riverside - Downtown Via Mass. Turnpike.). See http://www.mbta.com/schedmaps/bus/index.cfm for detailed bus route and schedule. Bus drops off at Riverside T Station. Hotel is adjacent to the T Station. ================================================================= INDIVIDUAL, ON-LINE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. NO EMAIL! To Register visit: http://www.basug.org/register.php3 CONTACT: If you have questions about the meeting contact: Vanessa Hayden: vchayden@yahoo.com BASUG CONTACTS: BASUG's Mail Address: BASUG PO Box 253 Boston, MA 02117 To email our Webmaster: basugwm@basug.org