About SAS

SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions, SAS helps customers improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW®.

What is SAS system?

The SAS System known well as Statistical Analysis System is one of the most widely used, flexible data processing, reporting and analyses tools.

SAS is a set of solutions for enterprise-wide business users as well as a powerful fourth-generation programming language for performing tasks or analyses in a variety of realms such as these: -

Analytic Intelligence
General | Data Mining and Statistical Analysis | Forecasting & Econometrics | Operations Research | Quality Improvement

Business Intelligence
General | Applications Development | Content Delivery | Query and Reporting

Data Warehousing
General | ETL & Data Quality | Warehouse Management

The core of the SAS System is Base SAS software, which consists of the following:

	SAS language a programming language that you use to manage your data. SAS procedures software tools for data analysis and reporting. macro facility a tool for extending and customizing SAS software programs and for reducing text in your programs. DATA step debugger a programming tool that helps you find logic problems in DATA step programs. Output Delivery System (ODS) a system that delivers output in a variety of easy-to-access formats, such as SAS data sets, listing files, or Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). SAS windowing environment an interactive, graphical user interface that enables you to easily run and test your SAS programs. (Source: SAS.Com)

With Base SAS software as the foundation, you can integrate with SAS many SAS business solutions that enable you to perform large scale business functions, such as data warehousing and data mining, human resources management and decision support, financial management and decision support, and others.

SAS Language Elements

The SAS language consists of statements, expressions, options, formats, and functions similar to those of many other programming languages. In SAS, you use these elements within one of two groups of SAS statements:

• DATA steps
• PROC steps.

A DATA step consists of a group of statements in the SAS language that can

• read data from external files
• write data to external files
• read SAS data sets and data views
• create SAS data sets and data views.

Once your data is accessible as a SAS data set, you can analyze the data and write reports by using a set of tools known as SAS procedures.

A group of procedure statements is called a PROC step. SAS procedures analyze data in SAS data sets to produce statistics, tables, reports, charts, and plots, to create SQL queries, and to perform other analyses and operations on your data. They also provide ways to manage and print SAS files.

SAS Macro Facility

Base SAS software includes the SAS Macro Facility, a powerful programming tool for extending and customizing your SAS programs, and for reducing the amount of code that you must enter to do common tasks. Macros are SAS files that contain compiled macro program statements and stored text. You can use macros to automatically generate SAS statements and commands, write messages to the SAS log, accept input, or create and change the values of macro variables.