This Usage Note provides some tips for creating and troubleshooting Custom Input Forms for SAS Stored Processes that are executed using the SAS Stored Process Web Application.

If the STPRun directive is included on the URL in a URL Display Portlet, the user credentials will be passed to the SAS Stored Process Web Application. So, the user will not be prompted for credentials a second time when the SAS Stored Process is ex

SAS 9.2 might not open when you invoke it, and the following error message appears: imgsrc="{fusion_30959_1_sas_stopped_working.jpg}" alt="image label"> In the Windows Event Viewer, an event similar to th

My favorite quotes from the second quarter 2010 issue of sascom magazine are below. Click through to see them in context.

Basel II compliance should not be seen as a compliance hurdle but rather as a source of potential business benefits. - Myint Zaw, Senior Quantitative Analyst in Product Risk Analytics of Card Products Risk Management, CIBC

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Master Data Management bridges the gap between the operational world and analytical data worlds. Essential data for the enterprise must be complete, consistent, accurate and able to span both operational and analytical systems. - Marc Smith, Solutions Specialist Manager, SAS Canada

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A new cadre of analytic leaders is about to emerge. These pioneers will have a little Columbus, a lot of Machiavelli, a little Caesar and a lot of Alexander the Great. If you don’t have someone like that at your organization, I suggest you start looking right now. - Thorton May, IT Futurist and Executive Director and Dean of the IT Leadership Academy

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We expect to grow revenue from the current customer portfolio by making careful choices of appropriate customer treatments, rather than endless increasing of campaign intensity. - Michal Seifert, Head of Direct Marketing, Česká spořitelna

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Many C-level executives admit they have trouble understanding the true value of their customers. - Prakash Kuttikatt, General Manager of Customer Intelligence and Retail, SAS Australia

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We saw millions of dollars worth of opportunities and gains by implementing SAS solutions and optimizing our ability to identify fraud and eliminate it from our portfolio. - Rex Pruitt, Business Analyst, PREMIER Bankcard LLC

To submit noncontiguous sections of code in the SAS Enhanced Editor, you need to add comment delimiters to the code that you do not want to run. In the enhanced editor, you can use a keyboard shortcut to add delimiters to

A few years ago, Alison ran a series of 5-question interviews here with SAS employees. We recently published a corporate responsibility e-book that includes a similar series of interviews with experts and practitioners in the corporate sustainability movement. I'll be republishing those interviews here over the next month or so, but you can also download the entire e-book to get all of the interviews, plus in-depth articles and case studies about organizations around the globe that are reinventing responsibility.

Our first interview in this series is with Marc Cornelissen. As an expedition leader, Marc has witnessed the impact of climate change on the North pole with his own eyes. He has since been actively devoted to climate research and the sustainability of society. He initiated the Ben & Jerry's Climate Change College in 2005. This European project supports environment-minded young entrepreneurs. Via his company Icentials, he helps companies design and realize sustainable growth strategies.

What are good examples of sustainable entrepreneurship?
“What inspires me, are companies that have shaken up an industry with their approach to sustainability. Ben & Jerry’s is such an example, as their energy-neutral ice-cream is made with sustainably acquired dairy products. And the company has already been discussing energy issues with both their suppliers and society since 1978. Patagonia, producer of outdoor sportswear, has also noticeably influenced its industry. They use plastic bottles, organic cotton, reusable polyesters and environment friendly dyes for their sustainable and recyclable fleece jackets. I certainly respect the way in which Tendris is creating an acceleration in innovation within the light industry. These trendsetters are not put off by paying the price of one’s mistakes.”

How has sustainable entrepreneurship taken shape within your organization?
“We use wind energy, compensate for our carbon emission, meet via conference calls and have eliminated the need for commuter traffic as much as possible. The profit for society is helping organizations in making their primary processes sustainable. This especially involves continuity, and we investigate which products and Innovations are needed to ensure that we still have a market in the future. In order to deploy the transition to a circular economy, companies have to explore new forms of collaboration and unknown territories. They have to start thinking differently, and must organize processes in a completely different way.”

Where should the responsibility for sustainability lie within an organization?
“Sustainability is often still considered a separate branch of the Corporate Social Responsibility department. If sustainability is embedded in the core activities of an organization, then everyone is jointly responsible for sustainability performances. This includes an assessment and rewarding of the board and top management with regard to these performances.”

What are realistic targets to set within an organization?
“The targets depend on the context and maturity of the organization. In order to establish targets, companies must first show how they manage the dimensions of people, planet and profit. They can subsequently assess how this corresponds to the best practices in their sector. By measuring with key performance indicators, companies can measure their progress and celebrate successes. Once again the old principle applies: to measure is to know.”

How sustainable are you in daily life?
“People nearly expect me to have a sustainability aureole, but I too am confronted with the same daily dilemmas as everyone else. I do live a sustainability-conscious life, though I also book air holidays for my family. Besides, the North pole is difficult to reach without a plane. Creating a smaller footprint will not solve everything. In my opinion, the solution can be found in working together to create a society in which we can live together and do business in a sustainable manner.”

For more inspiration, download the full e-book today: Future Bright - Reinventing Responsibility.

Overview Typically, to make user-defined formats available for selection in SAS Business Intelligence clients such as SAS size="-1">® Information Map Studio and SAS size

If you have followed the instructions in "{FUSION:40103}">SAS Note 40103 for making format catalogs available, but you still cannot see the formats in SAS Information Map Studio, then review the following pos

e·qui·lib·ri·um (n): a state of intellectual or emotional balance; poise; a state of adjustment between opposing or divergent influences or elements; a state of balance between opposing forces or actions.

I read somewhere that a duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why. Apparently, all porcupines float in water. Cats have more than 100 vocal sounds, while dogs only have about 10. Every episode of Seinfeld supposedly has a reference to Superman. The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

Facts. There's no shortage of "facts" out there. With the availability of information on the Internet, sometimes it's difficult to separate fact from fiction. American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler once quipped that "the telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea."

But how are facts derived? What makes something a fact? In order for something to be factual, it has to be proven, and perception or speculation eliminated. Philosophers debate those things that most of us take for fact, even our very existence.

As a young teenager, I lived in Maryland and would travel to Canada each Christmas to visit my brothers and sisters. One winter I stayed at my sister's house, which she had rented for a year. The house was more than a century old and, unbeknownst to me, quite haunted.

Continue reading "Strange facts, a Nobel laureate ... and a real ghost (really!)"

Plans are underway for a day of getting dirty with data! My SAS colleagues, Tapan Patel and Wayne Thompson, along with workshop host Dean Abbott, President of Abbott Analytics, are hosting a Hands-On Predictive Analytics Workshop on October 18th. This session is one of several workshops that kick off the Predictive Analytics World Conference later this year at the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center in Alexandria, VA.

I think you'll agree that once you know the basics of predictive analytics, there's no better way to dive in than operating real data mining software yourself, hands-on. "Get your hands dirty" by trying out state-of-the-art modeling methods on real data. Working to solve a specific business problem, you will design and execute on a core analytical approach. You'll also prep the data, set up the modeling, push "go" and check out the results.

While the vast majority of concepts covered during this workshop apply to all predictive analytics projects - regardless of the particular software employed - this workshop's hands-on experience is achieved via SAS Enterprise Miner. A license will be made available to participants for use on that day (and will be included with workshop registration). Each workshop participant will have access to a computer with SAS Enterprise Miner installed for the duration of the workshop.

Early Bird registration for the full conference is available now! If you decide to attend, we invite you to use the SAS 20 percent off sponsor discount code: SASPAW20. Hope to see you there!

While many of my colleagues were in Berlin, attending and presenting at the Premiere Business Leadership Conference, I had the privilege of speaking at Intel’s FasterRisk . It struck me as humbling, really: In Berlin, Dr. Jim Goodnight, SAS co-founder and CEO, was wowing an audience of several hundred senior executives with a multimedia display of the capabilities and benefits of high performance computing. And I was less than 600 miles away in London speaking to nearly one hundred and fifty senior risk and financial services experts - the guys who would be in the trenches with this solution – about the near real-time decision making capabilities of this new optimised risk management framework.

I became quite excited while preparing for the event. I was thinking of how far risk management had come in the 25 years of my career (covered in my event recap on Intel’s blog). Processes that were once unsolvable or took days and weeks can now be answered in minutes – near real time. This advantage, according to Tham Ming Soong, United Overseas Bank Chief Risk Officer, allows his firm to understand market changes before competitors. It will help UOB take products to market - or exit markets - sooner.

Some of the tangible benefits of a high performance computing risk process include:

1. A better ability to react to various market shock events with more precision, and potentially take advantage of the market shocks and look for better arbitrage opportunities.
   
2. Provision of a more structured decision capability that will allow a firm to more consistently evaluate its product structure and expected return against inflections in the market.
   
3. Offers the firm an analytical framework that will provide a consistent process for making decisions with the capital optimization/option analysis framework.
   
4. Expert judgment for principles is augmented by a very sophisticated and analytical view of business decisions across a very large combination of information.
   
5. A high performance risk management framework that will provide a complete picture of firmwide risk.

By implementing a change in risk reward methodology along with a high-performance computational environment, executive management can achieve a dynamic view of firmwide risk and a realistic measure of capital performance. Myron Scholes, PhD an Nobel Laureate, said, “Risk management is not just monitoring; it’s really optimization. It's figuring out how to allocate capital, how much capital to allocate to strategies, and determining the return on those strategies.” In a recent interview, he said capital optimization via a high performance risk management framework can create a competitive advantage for firms.
Continue reading "Risk management: 25 years new with high performance computing"

surpass (v) to become better, greater or stronger than; exceed; to go beyond; to transcend the reach, capacity or powers of

Niccolò Paganini was a gifted 19th century violinist and is regarded as perhaps one of the best of all time. He was also well known as a consummate entertainer with a great sense of humor. One of his most memorable concerts took place in his home country of Italy with a full orchestra behind him. He was performing before a sold-out audience. As always, his technique was flawless, his tone was perfect, and the audience was enjoying the incredible performance of a virtuoso. Suddenly, toward the end of the concert and during a very exuberant composition, a single string on Paganini's violin snapped and hung idly from his Stradivarius. The master frowned slightly but continued to play, improvising as only Paganini could.

Then to the surprise of the audience, a second string broke, and then a third. Comically, Paganini stood there with three strings dangling from his violin. (A violin has but four strings, tuned in perfect fifths.) Instead of leaving the stage, Paganini maintained his composure and deftly finished the increasingly complex piece on the last remaining string.

Resourcefulness, calmness in the face of challenge, focus and mastery of resources will always triumph in difficult circumstances.

I recently attended two high-performance risk events featuring our very own Dr. Jim Goodnight along with Dr. Myron Scholes, father of many economic principles and models such as the Black-Scholes model.

At both events, I was amazed at how a room full of risk executives could be so rapt at the words that fell from the lips of Scholes ... and Goodnight captivated the audience with his candid commentary.

Goodnight said two very powerful things: First, he reiterated how our new high-performance computing capability is "game changing," and offered a personal invitation to banks who would like to be a part of co-developing this solution with SAS.

Second, when asked by the audience how this high-performance risk solution would make a difference in the business of risk, Goodnight repeated the words of a SAS customer who indicated that this solution "puts the risk office on par with the trader."

You see, the risk organisation in a bank is generally perceived as the "police" within the bank. The risk group typically counsels front- and middle-office staff on what they can and can't do based on potential risk or compliance with regulatory constraints. Our new high-performance risk solution allows the CRO and his or her team to assess market conditions, fluctuations, risk factors and a huge number of other parameters in near real time, allowing it to make business recommendations to the traders. This is the brass ring for the risk office – to provide real revenue-generating value to the business.

When sending Excel files as email attachments from SAS 9.2 on Unix, you will receive errors that an attachment record was truncated and the LRECL is too small.

When a cube build fails, the OLAP procedure attempts to remove the directories that it created. If the process fails in such a way that this is not possible, rebuilding the cube might cause a new directory to be created wi

When attempting to use the WHERE EXPRESSION window within the Viewtable interface, you could experience unexpected results. If you attempt to define a WHERE subset for your table, and enter a ? as a

The Visual Data Explorer does not support hyperlinks in detail data. If a hyperlink is in a column of data in the detail table, when it is viewed from the Visual Data Explorer, the link will not be active.

Wednesday at The Premier Business Leadership Series in Berlin, Futurist Thornton May challenged a group of international business executives with this question: Has the way people think about analytics changed over time?

The response was a resounding yes, but for several different reasons. Yes, due to increased competition and the need to identify competitive advantages. Yes, due to new tools providing new capabilities. Yes, due to a desire to not just look at the past, but also to understand the future. And yes, due to a vast amount of unstructured data (think social media, rich media, etc.) possibly bringing new information.

Whether in retail banking, insurance, energy or hospitality, the executives agreed on the potential of business analytics to transform their businesses. Despite where they are on their individual journeys to weave analytics into the fabric of their business, they all shared perspectives on clearly defining the role of the analyst vis-a-vis other supporting functions like IT, for instance. Moreover, it is clear that analytics on its own will not bring change; it needs to be accompanied by compelling stories. Stories bring context to the analysis and reason to act.

One example involved a Middle East bank that discovered, using analytics, that a large enterprise customer believed to be the most profitable customer -- and treated as such -- was indeed much less profitable than a smaller oil and gas company that was hardly being catered to at all. What analytic stories are being told in your organization? How are they impacting your actions? And what new questions are they driving you to ask?

Thornton May argues that, “The questions we ask about the future will bias the answers we get.” Are we indeed asking the right questions?

A great starting point is to set your eyes on where you would like to be in the future and structure the problem accordingly. Through this you will learn new things that will prompt new questions, which in turn will shape your analytics journey.

The error, "Unable to load the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office" might occur due to the incorrect version of the .Net Framework that is being loaded. This can occur when there is a configuration file that instructs the Microsoft Office appli

In the SAS Financial Management Studio Models workspace, a warning indicator (!) appears next to a model to indicate that adjustments have been created for this model, but the results of those adjustments are not yet

Oil is still flowing into the Gulf of Mexico and the World Cup is underway in South Africa but those stories were pushed off the front pages for a while to make room for the really big news. Of course, I’m referring to AT&T’s announcement that new customers will no longer have the option of an unlimited 3G data plan. From now on if you exceed your usage cap, you’ll pay extra. I was amazed at how much coverage this story had. Smartphones, particularly the iPhone, are the cultural icons of the day, so the media lavishes attention on something as seemingly mundane as a price change.

Even north of the border AT&T’s announcement received extensive coverage. SAS Canada had a big presence at the Canadian Telecom Summit where the subject of usage caps was a hot topic. Canadian operators already have usage caps on wireless data so the changes in the US were seen as validation of longstanding policy. I moderated a panel discussion where TELUS Vice President Brent Johnston defended his company’s usage policy. TELUS imposes a cap but warns customers when they are approaching the limit. According to Johnston, the cap is not an issue for most customers.

This is not the first time AT&T imposed a cap for a service that had been unlimited. Until 1977, Ma Bell allowed us to call Directory Assistance as often as we liked. Most of us would consult the telephone book first, but some people would dial 411 anytime they needed a number. A new charge of 50 cents per call was implemented but you were granted a few freebies every month (I think it was two), but it might have been more. They claimed that a very small percentage of people were responsible for most of the calls and that most users would rarely exceed the number of freebies. Then, as now, the usage cap generated a lot of debate, much of it negative. I was in college then saw comedian Gabe Kaplan entertain the student body at the Gator Growl. Joking that 50 cents should justify more information than just a phone number, Kaplan called and asked “what is the meaning of life?”

With the media buzzing about AT&T’s new price plan, The Wall Street Journal conducted an unscientific poll asking - Is AT&T doing the right thing by imposing a cap? Seventy percent of the respondents said no. But the people responding to the poll are not the ones tasked with managing the business.

Communications companies have a never-ending challenge in balancing fixed and usage-based charges. Consumers will always want both lower prices and price certainty. Knowing which offer is the best fit for a given customer is not a trivial task. It requires getting data from silos across the organization and applying advanced analytic models to get the right answer. In March, Yankee Group published the results of a survey of US and Canadian operators and 68 percent plan to invest in analytics for product and price optimization within the next 18 months. SAS will be working with communications companies around the world to ensure they strike the right balance.