The good news is that I've got a chance to reprise last year's SUGI paper, RIP: The Unofficial SAS Weblog, at next year's SAS Global Forum.

The bad news is it's because readership is, how shall we say, a tad too niche by Weblogs, Inc. standards and the blog is being "retired" (next time, I'll try to blog for a less successful company!).

So thanks to Weblogs, Inc. for giving me a twenty-month run and also to those of you who visited and helped keep things going as long as they did!

And who knows?

Maybe I'll be un-canceled if the DVD sales are good!

:-)

Well then, have I got a Stupid SAS/Excel Trick for you!

Here's an example of how a SAS macro - %many2one - employs a technique that combines SAS, VBS, and VBA to automate the process of creating one Excel workbook from many individual Excel worksheets:

%many2one(in=c:\temp\classods.xls!classods
c:\temp\shoesods.xls!shoesods c:\temp\zipcodeods.xls!zipcodeods,
out=c:\temp\combined.xls);

Full code after the jump (indented code here) - report bugs in the comments!

• *-> Create A Few Worksheets;
• ods noresults;
• ods listing close;
• ods html body="c:\temp\classods.xls";
• proc print data=sashelp.class(obs=10);
• run;
• ods html close;
• ods html body="c:\temp\shoesods.xls";
• proc print data=sashelp.shoes(obs=10);
• run;
• ods html close;
• ods html body="c:\temp\zipcodeods.xls";
• proc print data=sashelp.zipcode(obs=10);
• run;
• ods html close;
• ods listing;
• ods results;
• *-> Macro to Combine Worksheets;
• %macro many2one(in=,out=);
• options noxwait;
• x erase "&out";
• options xwait;
• data _null_;
• file "c:\temp\class.vbs";
• put 'Set XL = CreateObject("Excel.Application")' /
• 'XL.Visible=True';
• %let n=1;
• %let from=%scan(&in,&n," ");
• %do %while("&from" ne "");
• %let fromwb=%scan(&from,1,"!");
• %let fromws=%scan(&from,2,"!");
• put "XL.Workbooks.Open ""&fromwb""";
• %if &n=1 %then
• put "XL.ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs ""&out"", -4143"%str(;);
• %else %do;
• put "XL.Workbooks(""%scan(&fromwb,-1,'\')"").Sheets(""&fromws"").Copy ,XL.Workbooks(""%scan(&out,-1,'\')"").Sheets(%eval(&n-1))";
• put "XL.Workbooks(""%scan(&fromwb,-1,'\')"").Close";
• %end;
• %let n=%eval(&n+1);
• %let from=%scan(&in,&n, " ");
• %end;
• put "XL.Workbooks(""%scan(&out,-1,'\')"").sheets(1).activate";
• put "XL.Workbooks(""%scan(&out,-1,'\')"").Save";
• put "XL.Quit";
• run;
• x 'c:\temp\class.vbs';
• %mend;
• *-> Example;
• %many2one(in=c:\temp\classods.xls!classods
• c:\temp\shoesods.xls!shoesods c:\temp\zipcodeods.xls!zipcodeods,
• out=c:\temp\combined.xls);

It features a cover story interview with Sanjay Poone, the newly minted SVP and general manager of analytics at SAP, who shares his vision of BI-Tomorrowland:

"But I will finish with another example of how I think analytics delivered in a simple interface is going to change so many things. Think of using an interface that looks like an Amazon.com recommendation engine, but is backed by some very sophisticated data mining or other technology to find an anomaly in your spend or some other issue. Part of it is search, part is process. I watch my nephews play SimCity and wonder, how is a six- or an eight-year-old going to build this? But they actually simulate their way to build cities with very fancy rules. You negotiate with a city planner, and elsewhere a fire sprouts up and you've got to take action, make sophisticated choices. We've got to make analytics as simple as the SimCity experience is to a kid, so people can navigate through their decisions on a day-to-day basis in the context of a process they don't even think of as analytics. It is there; it is embedded into the business process for a HR manager or a supply chain manager. They see a few metrics and get a few suggestions, they act and go on with their life. That's how mainstream we're seeking to make it."

Guess there's no need to pursue that Master's Degree in Analytics!

Questioned by an Editorial Director about the critical attention he's given lately to Business Objects, Stephen Few offers up this explanation in his latest blog entry:

"First of all, I don't believe Business Objects does data visualization worse than other mainstream business intelligence vendors. Most large business intelligence vendors don't understand data visualization. They focus primarily on useless and distracting visual fluff rather than meaningful substance."

:-)

Computer Business Review picks its 10 Most Influential Movers and Shakers in the Enterprise IT sector for the past year, and it's close-but-no-cigar for SAS CEO Jim Goodnight, who CBR notes was nominated but narrowly missed the cut.

If he'd only sported one of those Jonathan-Schwartz-ponytails that seemed to grab the editors' attention!

And if you subscribe to the SAS Samples RSS Feed, you'll also know how to Keep only the variables in a data set that end in a particular character or characters.

Uncomfortable with the C-like SCL functions that this example employs?

No problem-o.

Check out this timely SAS-L thread, where folks check in with SQL-based solutions!

Claiming the number two position amongst BI vendors was SAS, with a market share of 10.2% and sales of $582.4M.

If you've got $3,500 burning a hole in your pocket, you can view the complete IDC study.

Or you can settle for this abridged-but-free recap of Worldwide Business Intelligence Tools 2005 Vendor Shares, based on revenue ($M):

BTW, IDC also found that SAS continued its wide lead in the "advanced analytics" market - software for mining, statistical analysis and forecasting - with a 28.3% market share, more than twice the 12.6% share of its closest competitor.

My name is Bill, and I'm a data addict...

DMReview's Steve Schultz takes a look at our insatiable appetite for data to develop customer insights, and concludes a less-is-more approach is in order.

As such, Schultz calls on "overweight data hogs" (you know who you are!) to 'fess up to their data addiction and try his five-step data diet program:

1. Try Smaller Portions ("Sample Data")
2. Focus on Complex Carbohydrates ("Essential Info")
3. Plan Meals ("Focus")
4. Cook without the Excess Fat ("Limit Variables")
5. Remember to Work Out ("Try New Perspectives")

And if that doesn't do the trick, check out this slick new Sun Data Warehouse Appliance, which comes pre-loaded with 24TB of storage!

I wanna see your stats, you wanna see my what?

Over at Google Video, it's Weird Al-meets-Statistics in Statz 4 Life, a parody of Nelly's Grillz.

An attempt to get students to enjoy stats as much as hip-hop, Da Statz Krew's video debuted in a Research Methods in Psychology course taught by U. of Oregon grad student Chuck Tate.

I smell an MTV Video Music Awards sweep!

Thought I'd call your attention once again to The Dashboard Spy, which is sporting yet another fine contribution by SAS's Robert Allison.

This time it's an executive dashboard for a hypothetical U.S. commercial airline that Allison whipped up for the Business Intelligence Network 2006 Data Visualization Competition.

BTW, Allison's provided links to both the interactive web output as well as the SAS/GRAPH code used to create it!

By sharing really bad examples of graph design, Few hopes to illustrate ineffective graph design practices and hopefully embarrass the vendors that create them to pay more attention to what they show their customers (much like the service performed by Web Pages that Suck!).

The first nominee, a line plot lifted from some old Business Objects user documentation, has a number of problems, not the least of which is a rather odd arrangement of months in alphabetical order along the x-axis - i.e., Apr, Aug, Dec, Feb, etc.

Few's second nominee, a bar chart found on iDashboards, is also x-axis-challenged, labeling only every other state on the x-axis, leaving it up to the viewer to guess which state follows Maine alphabetically.

Can't wait to see more!

In Mastering Disaster, Fast Company reports on a meeting of SAS's Pandemic Task Force, where "chief disaster officer" Joanna D'Aquanni and others vow to keep those SETINIT's coming, even in the face of adversity.

And no, face-slapping is not part of the plan!

But the press is reporting on an unusual new Cindy Sheehan-like protest that SAS is grappling with.

Louis DuPree has been picketing by the main gate of the SAS complex in Cary since July 11th, claiming that the company is firing him because he complained of harassment by his manager and because he has HIV.

SAS said the company couldn't comment on DuPree's specific claims due to privacy policies, but noted the job loss was part of a recent restructuring. SAS's Jim Davis was adamant that the company does not discriminate.

And SAS has been optimized to exploit the-chip-formerly-known-as-Montecito, yielding significantly improved performance.

So what does this mean for your average-SAS-Joe?

Internetnews.com reports that our CPU-hungry friends at the Census Bureau can now expect to see results in a day or so from SAS jobs that formerly took 5-6 days to complete!

But there is a SAS Global Forum 2007 (2K7 for you gamers!).

And one tradition that hasn't been lost in the transition is the Call for Papers, which is now open.

The deadline for submitting abstracts and working drafts is Friday, September 22.

Only 66 days of procrastination left!

Over at the official Microsoft Excel 2007 blog, there's an interesting guest post from Excel User Experience Designer Sander Viegers, who explains some of the motivation behind the redesign of the Office 2007 charting experience.

Viegers notes users felt strongly that Office 2003 charts simply did not look good, and illustrates their point with a side-by-side comparison of some typical maroon-yellow-blue-grey Excel 2003 charts to other charts gleaned from annual reports, newspapers and magazines.

To address these concerns, Excel 2007 will introduce two new user interface elements - Quick Layouts and Styles - to allow people to easily create good-looking and meaningful charts.

Interesting stuff (including the interactive prototyping process!), but as "mcmanuslive" notes in a thoughtful comment, there's still room for other improvements!

Ever write code like the following to concatenate a bunch of fields and drive yourself crazy debugging the unbalanced parentheses, quotes, and concatenation bars resulting from the inevitable typo?

TRIM(LEFT(X1)) || ' ' || TRIM(LEFT(X2)) || ' ' || TRIM(LEFT(X3)) || ' ' || TRIM(LEFT(X4))

Well then, do your eyes a big favor and learn about the new CATX function of SAS 9, which accomplishes the same thing with this terse code:

CATX(' ', OF X1-X4)

That Was Easy!

If approved, the new intensive one-year professional master's degree program will be offered beginning in 2007 as part of the proposed Institute for Advanced Analytics on NCSU's Centennial Campus.

The Analytics Initiative will receive strong support from SAS, which was created by Goodnight and NCSU colleagues more than 30 years ago to analyze agricultural research data.

So how about some free Distance Education for us Midwesterners?

:-)

Stephen Few suggests it's time you give those tired Pivot Tables of yours a rest and check out the following:

1. Crosstab arrangements of small multiples
2. Multiple concurrent views with brushing functionality
3. Heatmap matrix
4. Parallel coordinates
5. Glyphs
6. The table lens

Some neat techniques!

Like an earlier shakeup in May, the upheaval stems from the consolidation of SAS' two sales and marketing organizations in the Americas.

The affected employees will remain on SAS's payroll until Sept. 15, and will have the chance to apply for other jobs within the company.

Updated News & Observer report.