What is SAS( Statistical Analytical Software)?
In Today’s world, talk about SAS is everywhere but what exactly SAS is?? The following sections explain how SAS software is a combination of a statistical package, a data – base management system, and a high level programming language and and provide an overview of what this technology can do for you. This trail provides everything you'll need to know about getting started with the SAS .
SAS stands for Statistical Analytical Software
SAS is an integrated system of software solutions that enables you to perform the following tasks:
- data entry, retrieval, and management
- report writing and graphics design
- statistical and mathematical analysis
- business forecasting and decision support
- operations research and project managemen
applications development
How you use SAS depends on what you want to accomplish. Some people use many of the capabilities of the SAS System, and others use only a few. The core of SAS System lies in the Base SAS Software(software product.)
At the core of the SAS System is Base SAS software which is the software product that you will learn to use in this documentation. This section presents an overview of Base SAS. It introduces
- capabilities of Base SAS
- addresses methods of running SAS
- outlines various types of output.
To build a SAS data set with Base SAS, you write a program that uses statements in the SAS programming language. A SAS program that begins with a DATA statement and typically creates a SAS data set or a report is called a DATA step.
The following SAS program creates a SAS data set named WEIGHT_CLUB from the health club data:
data weight_club; 1
input IdNumber 1-4 Name $ 6-24 Team $ StartWeight EndWeight; 2
Loss=StartWeight-EndWeight; 3
datalines; 4
1023 David Shaw red 189 165 5
1049 Amelia Serrano yellow 145 124 5
1219 Alan Nance red 210 192 5
1246 Ravi Sinha yellow 194 177 5
1078 Ashley McKnight red 127 118 5
; 6
run;
The following list corresponds to the numbered items in the preceding program
Don’t worry we will cover all these in detail in our tutorial.
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1 |
The DATA statement tells SAS to begin building a SAS data set named WEIGHT_CLUB. |
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2 |
The INPUT statement identifies the fields to be read from the input data and names the SAS variables to be created from them (IdNumber, Name, Team, StartWeight, and EndWeight). |
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3 |
The third statement is an assignment statement. It calculates the weight each person lost and assigns the result to a new variable, Loss. |
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4 |
The DATALINES statement indicates that data lines follow. |
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5 |
The data lines follow the DATALINES statement. This approach to processing raw data is useful when you have only a few lines of data. (Later sections show ways to access larger amounts of data that are stored in files.) |
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6 |
The semicolon signals the end of the raw data, and is a step boundary. It tells SAS that the preceding statements are ready for execution. |
Note: By default, the data set WEIGHT_CLUB is temporary; that is, it exists only for the current job or session. For information about how to create a permanent SAS data set, see Introduction to DATA Step Processing.
