Blogging about all things SAS

We have been doing a bit of research on whether we should develop some easy to use !sasInct dashboarding capability to sit on top of SAS.

We are thinking along the lines of:

- Access any SAS data (i.e Infomaps, Datasets, SAS Access/blah, Stored Processes, Web Services)

- Display in mulitple delivery frameworks (i.e SAS Portal/Portlets, Desktop widgets, external widgets to integrate with third party intranets etc)

- Sexy graphs (i.e somehting that will knock your sox off)

So we have been researching OEM graphing engines vs build our own, and we have been researching what other vendors do for dashboards.

Found these interesting examples from Corda:

US Dept of Health and Human Services
Bank Call Center
CenterView How To
Corda Call Center
Financial Services
Healthcare Dashboards
Help Desk Call Center
Project Tracking
Quickbooks Reporting
Shipping and Transportation
Financial Reporting
National Gas Prices
Financial Scoreboard
Marketing Dashboard
Retail Sales
Supply Chain Management
Project Management
Sales Dashboard – based on a design from Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few
Salesforce Demo
Services & Support
Human Capital Management

(and of course if you are in the market for dashboards on top of SAS and have some unique requirements let us know! – Contact Us )

Update – 30 May 2009

Thanks to a comment by Mathias (and followup email – thanks dude) the following code as a calculated measure in the OLAP cube did exactly what I needed:

([Measures].[Costsum],[KeepDim1].currentmember,[KeepDim2].currentmember,[LoseDim1].currentmember,[LodeDim2].defaultmember)

/

([Measures].[QtyAVG],[KeepDim1].currentmember,[KeepDim2].currentmember,[LoseDim1].currentmember,[LodeDim2].defaultmember)

The trick was you have to specifically exclude all dimensions you dont want included in the calc usinf defaultmember otherwise the calc will use currentmember for it.

—End update

So im struggling with MDX and SAS at the mo.

I have a cube that has a number of dimension, for example:

• Product
• Customer
• Period
• Location
• Sales Person

And I have some measures

• Cost
• Quantitiy

Now I want to calculate unit cost (i.e Cost / Quantitiy) but (and here is my problem) I only ever want to calculate it based on a combination of the Product and Sales Person dimensions.

So if only Product and Sales Person are added to the cube view (in WRS) then I can just divide Cost by Quantity.

But as soon as I add Organisation (or any other dimension), the cost gets split by the multiple organisation dimension members and therefore the dynamic calculation doesnt work, so I need to hardcode the formula to only pick up the cost based soley on the Product and Sales Person dimensions.

Any suggestions (using custom measures in OLAP cubes, or custom data item in Information Maps, im easy)?

Had a question on my blog about SAS Web parts that are available for Sharepoint and where to download them or install them from.

While researching the questin (sorry Joseph stil haven’t found them) I found this code in the SAS Paper I referenced:

data sampledata;
do n=1 to 1000;
x=int(ranuni(77777)*7);
y=int(ranuni(77777)*5);
output;
end;
run;

filename out ‘\\mySharePointServer\Shared Documents\ProcFreqExample.html’;

ODS HTML encoding=UTF8 body=out dev=gif;

proc freq data=sampledata;
tables height*weight / chisq;
run;

ODS HTML close;

So effectively you can publish to sharepoint using a simple UNC link.

I know I am going to need this in the future so this blog is a note to self.

So something non SAS for a change.

Our PC at home gave up the ghost so brought a new one and succumbed and put Microsoft Vista Home Premium (64 bit) on it.

Then realised that this version no longer include the ability to scan easily like you could in XP. For that you need Vista Ultimate….

We that’s what they want you to think. In fact you can scan with Vista Home Premium easily enough.

Just :

1. Click the Start icon.
2. Click All Programs .
3. Click Windows Photo Gallery .
4. Click File and then click Import From Scanner or Camera .
5. Click Import .
6. Click Scan .

Couple of announcements in Blog space lately have highlighted major price changes by BI vendors, making the software cheaper.

This one by Cindi outlines a change in pricing for Business Objects. It also mentions that SAP/BO have made Dev/Test environments free, a subject close to my heart at various SAS customers at the moment (and not in a good way).

And Microstrategy have announced a free version of their reporting suite for upto 100 named users (limited to 1 CPU though). There seems to be lots of additional modules you have to pay for, which I would call core reporting capabilty, but then given the number of blog posts about their offering you have to give their Marketing team a HI 5.

I have a colleague that has some spare time and he is a legend when it comes to coding custom DI Studio transformations.

So if you need any built he is available now, all he needs is a good requirements specification and he can develop them and send them over (for a very reasonable fee of course).

Interested then log a request via our online support system and we will get right back to you.

So my theory that Sun was going to merge with HP or SAP is shot now that Oracle have brought them (ok how about a shotgun marriage then

Then I noticed this blog SAP and Teradata Punch Back at Oracle announcing Teradata and SAP working closer together.

So will SAP buy Teradata?

And where does this leave SAS?

Are we moving towards 3 mega companies that provide Hardware, Software, and Services?

Does that mean Microsoft will need to buy Dell for hardware, and a somebody else for services.

What about HP (EDS) merging with Microsoft? It would give Microsoft Hardware and Services to add to their Opertaing Systems, Data base and BI tools. Which product would win out NeoView or Sql Server?

So many questions so few answers.

(well at least I can answer the NeoView vs Sql Server one