Big Data Analytics with SAS
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Preface

This book will introduce the reader to how SAS can be used to perform analytics on any size of data and how it's designed to enable users to perform big data analytics. The reader will be provided an introduction to learning SAS for data management, analytics, and reporting, and get examples in each chapter to allow hands-on use of The Power to Know®, thereby teaching the reader how they can use SAS® software to further their career and improve their company’s business processes.

The mission of this book is to introduce the reader to what the SAS programming language offers and how the reader can use SAS®software to further their careers and improve their company’s business processes. As stated in the Money Magazine and Payscale article The 21 Most Valuable Career Skills Now, May 16, 2016 by Kerri Anne Renzulli,Cybele Weisser, and Megan Leonhardt, SAS® is the most valuable career skill. The study isolated the specific skills (from about 2,300) correlated with higher pay, advancement, and career opportunities. SAS was found to be the most valuable in terms of average increase in salary. I have programmed in a variety of computer languages, such as C, C++, Java, and scripting languages like korn shell, and I will say that one of the reasons I enjoy using SAS is that I am confident that I can get SAS to accomplish any type of computing task or project. Don't get me wrong; this doesn't imply that SAS is the best solution/tool to use for everything, but it does mean I can use it to accomplish a task if I really want too. Like any good programmers, I chose to use applications or tools that can efficiently accomplish the task at hand. In my career, I've found SAS to be the best solution to solve complex analytics-based business problems, and it is my hope that you will find this book a great introduction to SAS that will help you advance your own career.

The reader will be provided with an introduction to learning SAS for data management, analysis, and reporting, as well as examples in each chapter, which will allow them hands-on use of The Power to Know®.

While is it impossible to become an expert on everything SAS does within one book, it is possible to start down the path to learning the fundamentals of SAS, which unpin how everything in SAS works. As such, this book is meant to be an initial primer for those who want to start the process of learning SAS and who are interested in how SAS makes it easier to solve complex business problems in a timely, efficient way.

This book will dismiss some of the misconceptions some may have heard about SAS, such as you can’t learn SAS without buying a license (not true), SAS is difficult to use (not true), and so on. It should empower the reader to be better prepared to seek SAS certifications if they so choose.

Note

This book uses the SAS® University Edition and a combination of the SAS Studio web-based interface and an iPython Jupyter Notebook for the hands-on examples. However, all the code examples are valid when submitted to any SAS 9.4 environment for execution.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Setting Up the SAS® Software Environment, teaches how to install and use a free version of SAS that leverages both the SAS Studio and an iPython Jupyter Notebook as interfaces to work with SAS.

Chapter 2, Working with Data Using SAS® Software, shows how to use SAS to create data directly and how SAS can be used with external data sources. In addition, the reader will learn how data needs to be prepared differently to do analytics versus doing queries and reports.

Chapter 3, Data Preparation Using SAS Data Step and SAS Procedures, introduces using both SAS data step code as well as SAS procedures for preparing data for analysis and reporting.  The reader will learn a couple of ways SAS can be used to transform data efficiently for doing analytics and learn about SAS macro programming.

Chapter 4, Analysis with SAS® Software, provides examples of performing descriptive and predictive analytics along with just one technique to improve the predictive power of a model. Furthermore, this chapter provides examples for doing forecasting as well as optimization.

Chapter 5, Reporting with SAS® Software, shows the reader how to use SAS Studio tasks and snippets to generate reports and graphs. In addition, it shows how to use some of the BASE SAS procedures and the ODS to deliver reports in different formats.

Chapter 6, Other Programming Languages in BASE SAS® Software, introduces two new languages, DS2 and FedSQL, which were developed in BASE SAS software and play important roles in performing big data analytics and moving the actual processing to where the data is stored.

Chapter 7, SAS® Software Engineers the Processing Environment for You, explains the importance that the SAS architecture plays in their analytics processing environment, which allows analytics to return important insights on big data in a timely manner.

Chapter 8, Why SAS Programmers Love SAS, wraps up the book and provides several examples of why SAS programmers love SAS and how analytics can be used across a variety of industries. It also discusses the importance of setting up an ACE and the roles and skills associated with this type of group.

What you need for this book

The reader should be curious about how SAS can be used to analyze data of any size and have a PC or macOS that meets the requires to run the ;SAS® University Edition as a virtual application or a compatible web browser that can run the SAS® University Edition via an AWS. Chapter 1, Setting Up the SAS® Software Environment, provides more details on the specifics needed to run the SAS® University Edition.

Who this book is for

 SAS professionals and data analysts who wish to perform analytics on big data using SAS to gain actionable insights will find this book to be very useful. If you are a data science professional looking to perform large-scale analytics with SAS, this book will also help you. A basic understanding of SAS will be helpful but is not mandatory.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "We will write some SAS code that will print Hello World."

A block of code is set as follows:

/* This is one way to add comments to your code */
data _null_;
   text="Hello World";
   put text;
run;
* here is another way to add a comment or to comment out code;

New terms and important words are shown in bold.

Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "We will primarily make use of the default SAS Programmer view for the examples within this book."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Reader feedback

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To send us general feedback, simply e-mail feedback@packtpub.com, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.

If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.

Customer support

Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.

Downloading the example code

You can download the example code files for this book from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you. You can download the code files by following these steps:

  1. Log in or register to our website using your email address and password.
  2. Hover the mouse pointer on the SUPPORT tab at the top.
  3. Click on Code Downloads & Errata.
  4. Enter the name of the book in the Search box.
  5. Select the book for which you're looking to download the code files.
  6. Choose from the drop-down menu where you purchased this book from.
  7. Click on Code Download.

Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:

  • WinRAR / 7-Zip for Windows
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  • 7-Zip / PeaZip for Linux

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Big-Data-Analytics-with-SAS. We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Downloading the color images of this book

We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from 

https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/BigDataAnalyticswithSAS_ColorImages.pdf

Errata

Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books-maybe a mistake in the text or the code-we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title. To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.

Piracy

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Questions

If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at questions@packtpub.com, and we will do our best to address the problem.

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