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Greetings NorthEast SAS Users!
Welcome to NESUG's 25th Year! We have a great program this year in honor of our anniversary! In our program, we have over 150 presentations in eleven sections, ranging from industry specific sessions, such as Management, Administration, and Support and Finance & Insurance, to your traditional favorites, like Programming: Foundations and Fundamentals and Statistics, Modeling, and Analysis, which has been expanded to four sessions of content this year! Of course, like always, there will be a Pharma, Healthcare, and Life Sciences section to help sharpen the SAS skills of our valued attendees from the pharmaceutical industry.
While there, take some time to attend a Hands-On workshop, where you can use the software and try out new techniques. Do you have a current SAS issue or question at work? Then, visit the NESUG Code Clinic and have expert users help you solve it! The Code Clinic will be located in the new and improved SAS Solutions Center, where you can meet and learn from the SAS developers themselves.
That's not all though! NESUG is the largest regional SAS conference on the East Coast and we anticipate over 500 attendees at this year's conference! The opportunities to network with other individuals engaged in similar professional interests will be incalculable.
The best part is that all this is included in the cost of registration. Don't pass up this opportunity to come celebrate our 25th year with us! Stay in touch through Facebook and LinkedIn and we'll see you all in November in Baltimore!
 
Lisa Pyle and Rob Russell
NESUG 2012 Conference Co-chairs |
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Registration is now open
Sign up now and save!
Registration is now open for the 2012 NESUG 25th Conference and Educational Forum - November 11-14 in Baltimore, Maryland. No matter what your experience level with SAS, this educational forum will help improve your programming skills and get the most out of your SAS applications.
Conference sections include:
- Coders' Corner
- Finance & Insurance
- Graphics & Reporting
- Hands-on Workshops
- Large Data Sets
- Management, Administration & Support
- Pharma, Healthcare & Life Sciences
- Posters
- Programming: Beyond the Basics
- Programming: Foundations & Fundamentals
- Statistics, Modeling & Analysis
Click here to register now. |
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Beautiful Baltimore!
It's been said that Baltimore is a northern city and Maryland is a southern state. Come and experience the best of both worlds and decide for yourself. From our home base at the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, you can see historic neighborhoods and downtown skyscrapers. And we're not far from shopping and great restaurants. The harbor and surrounding area are home to many of the city's most popular sites: the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Camden Yareds, M&T Bank Stadium, and the American Visionary Arts Museum and Science Center. Plan to stay a few extra days for sightseeing and vacation. |
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Mobile App
If you don't have a smart phone yet, then run right out and get one! It is the 21st century, after all. But the main reason is to get the NESUG mobile app that was such a big hit last year. The app works with iPhone, iPad Touch, Android, Torch, Blackberry and more. Via this app or mobile website, you will have an always-up-to-date schedule in hand, an attendee list on the go, a virtual message board, be able to create your own schedule, map your way around the meeting space, watch the conference twitter feeds and find out about our sponsors. It is available now and will be updated throughout the conference, so check it out. The 2012 conference app will be available in early October and updated throughout the conference. |
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Sunday Workshops
Get a jump start on the conference by taking advantage of Sunday Workshops being offered on NESUG 2012 opening day! These workshops provide you an opportunity to explore a topic not otherwise offered during the conference, or to delve more deeply into a topic of interest to you. They are available for a fee of $95 per workshop for registered attendees and $150 per workshop for others. Just click the appropriate boxes when registering on-line. Please note that space is limited and registration will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis at the conference. The workshops are:
Data Cleaning 101- Ron Cody
This half-day workshop discusses ways to look for data errors using both DATA step programming and Base SAS procedures. We start with programs and procedures to detect errors in character data. Functions such as NOTDIGIT and NOTALPHA are especially useful in this regard. For numeric data, we investigate methods for detecting data points outside of fixed ranges and continue on to develop programs for automatic outlier detection. Most of the material for this workshop is based on the two-day course, Data Cleaning Techniques, offered by SAS Institute.
Creating Complex Reports - Cynthia Zender 
This seminar is based on the SAS Global Forum paper of the same name . It is for intermediate SAS programmers. We will investigate how eight (8) complex reports were produced with SAS. All the code that produced the reports will be covered, in detail. All report output is produced using ODS (rather than LISTING) output. The reports include three versions of a standard demographic report, producing a color-banded report with PROC TABULATE, producing a report which uses special fonts (Bissantz SparkFonts) to produce a sparkline report, several graph examples and several unique report ordering examples. Procedures/Topics to be covered include: REPORT, TABULATE, FORMAT, MEANS, FREQ, Macro processing and DATA _NULL_ programming.
Building Reusable Macro Tools Using SAS® Software - Kirk Lafler
The SAS® Macro Language is a powerful feature for extending the capabilities of the SAS System. This presentation highlights a collection of techniques for constructing reusable and effective macros tools. Attendees learn how to build functional macros that process statements containing SAS code; create macros containing keyword or positional parameters; implement defensive programming techniques; build a library of macro utilities; interface the macro language with the SQL procedure; and develop efficient and portable macro language code.
Queries, Joins, and WHERE Clauses, Oh My! Demystifying PROC SQL - Christianna Williams
Subqueries, inline views, outer joins, Cartesian products, HAVING expressions, Set operators, INTO clauses... Just the terminology of SQL can be rather daunting for SAS programmers raised on getting the DATA step to do our bidding for data manipulation. Not to mention the profusion of commas and complete dearth of semi-colons found in a PROC SQL step! Nonetheless, even the most die-hard DATA Step programmers must grudgingly acknowledge that there are some tasks - such as the many-to-many merge or the "not-quite-equi-join" - that would require Herculean effort to accomplish with DATA steps but can be achieved amazingly concisely, even elegantly, using PROC SQL. This updated workshop will present a series of increasingly complex examples to illustrate the function of each of PROC SQL's clauses, with particular focus on summarization/ aggregation and a variety of joins. Additionally, the examples will illuminate how SQL "thinks" about rows and columns, some of which can cause unexpected results for the unwary user. And after all, PROC SQL is part of Base SAS; so, though you may need to learn a few new keywords to become an SQL wizard, no special license is required!
Click here for more detailed descriptions and author bios. |
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Papers from SAS
Once again we are pleased to announce that SAS will be presenting some special papers this year. Come hear the presentations and get a chance to talk directly to the SAS experts.
An Introduction to Creating Multi-Sheet Microsoft Excel Workbooks the Easy Way with SAS® (Vince Del Gobbo)
You Want ME to use SAS® Enterprise Guide® ?? (Vince DelGobbo)
"There's an App for That": It's Called SAS® ODS! Mobile Data Entry and Reporting via SAS ODS (Michael Drutar)
Applying Business Analytics to Optimize Clinical Research Operations (David Handelsman)
Off the Beaten Path: Create Unusual Graphs with ODS Graphics (Prashant Hebbar)
Look Out: After SAS/STAT® 9.3 Comes SAS/STAT 12.1! (Maura Stokes)
Becoming the Smartest Guys in the Room: An Analysis of the Enron Emails Using an Integration of Text Analytics and Case Management (John York)
Creating Statistical Graphics in SAS (Warren Kuhfeld)
Harnessing the Power of SAS ISO 8601 Informats, Formats, and the CALL IS8601_CONVERT Routine (Kim Wilson) |
Technical Tip
The following tip is from Kirk Paul Lafler. Kirk is a senior consultant and founder of Software Intelligence Corporation and has been using SAS since 1979. He is a SAS Certified Professional, provider of IT consulting services, trainer to SAS users around the world, and sasCommunity.org Advisory Board emeritus member. As the author of four books, including PROC SQL: Beyond the Basics Using SAS, Kirk has written more than five hundred papers and articles, been an invited speaker and trainer at three hundred-plus SAS user group conferences and meetings throughout North America, and is the recipient of 19 "Best" contributed paper, hands-on workshop (HOW), and poster awards. You can hear more from Kirk at his Sunday Workshop described above and his Hands-on Workshops on "Quick Results with PROC SQL" and "Quick Results with Output Delivery System (ODS)." Exploring the Contents of the DICTIONARIES Table and VDCTNRY SASHELP View for SAS 9.2 and 9.3 The SAS System collects and populates valuable information about SAS libraries, data sets (tables), catalogs, indexes, macros, system options, titles, views and a collection of other read-only tables called dictionary tables. Dictionary tables serve a special purpose by providing system-related information that is known by the current SAS session about SAS databases and applications. When a query is requested against a Dictionary table, SAS automatically launches a discovery process at runtime to collect information pertinent to that table. This information is made available anytime after a SAS session is started. Dictionary tables and SASHELP views contents permit a SAS session's activities to be easily accessed and monitored. This becomes particularly useful in the design and construction of software applications since the information can be queried and the results acted upon in a specific task such as in the allocation of filerefs or librefs. This tip explores the purpose and use of the Dictionary table DICTIONARIES and SASHELP view VDCTNRY, how the content is accessed, and what information is available. SAS users can easily stay current with any new Dictionary table release by accessing the read-only DICTIONARIES table. The following PROC SQL code displays the contents of existing Dictionary tables using the UNIQUE keyword. PROC SQL Code: PROC SQL; SELECT UNIQUE MEMNAME FROM DICTIONARY.DICTIONARIES; QUIT; Under the Windows platform, 29 Dictionary tables and SAS and SASHELP views exist in SAS 9.3 The following tip is from Kirk Paul Lafler. Kirk is senior consultant and founder of Software Intelligence Corporation and has been using SAS since 1979. He is a SAS Certified Professional, provider of IT consulting services, trainer to SAS users around the world, and sasCommunity.org Advisory Board emeritus member. As the author of four books including PROC SQL: Beyond the Basics Using SAS, Kirk has written more than five hundred papers and articles, been an Invited speaker and trainer at three hundred-plus SAS user group conferences and meetings throughout North America, and is the recipient of 19 "Best" contributed paper, hands-on workshop (HOW), and poster awards. |
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Stay Connected with NESUG!
Now it's easier than ever to stay in touch with NESUG throughout the year. Follow the latest developments as we plan for the conference, find out about upcoming local meetings in your area, and much more. Also, NESUG wants to hear from you. Become a fan of NESUG on Facebook and add to our wall and join our group on LinkedIn. Simply click on any of the links below for more information. See you online!
Linked In Group |
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NorthEast SAS Users Group
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