The Applications section is focused on concrete, real-world, problem solving using SAS®. Presentations will involve techniques to integrate programs, macros, or utilities – to run faster, use fewer resources, or be easier to maintain. This section provides an opportunity to learn not only about what was developed, but also how it was developed, and how it all comes together in a new application. There will be descriptions of solutions of all shapes and sizes, from one-off challenges solved for a single desktop to multi-layered applications that span the enterprise or the internet. Presentations may focus on one SAS feature, or an entire SAS product that has been put to work as the answer to a real-life challenge. Through these presentations, the Applicationssection will emphasize the use of SAS to accomplish practical tasks.
Coders’ Corner
Section Chairs
John Cohen, Advanced Data Concepts, LLC
Mary Anne Rutkowski , Merck & Co., Inc.
The Coders’ Corner Section is where we share knowledge and get new ideas in a shorter and less formal venue than in other NESUG sections. Presentationsare 10 minutes in length and the topics cover a wide range of tricks and tips for everyone from the beginner to the advanced programmer. Topics this year are organized around several themesand include a number of aspects of base SAS® (SAS macro language, PROC SQL, DATA Step merges, PROC TRANSPOSE, programming efficiency, debugging, program maintenance and documentation, SAS-Excel interaction), creating publication-ready output including use of ODS and SAS Mapping, and tips specific to Pharmaceutical Clinical Trials.
DATA Step Programming
Section Chairs
Joseph Guido, University of Rochester Medical School
Sandeep Kottam, Independent Consultant
The Data Step Programming section is a combination of beginning, intermediate and advanced topics which focus on programming within the data step. Presentations will focus on how the SAS® System creates a data set, including the compilation and execution phases, and the role of the program data vector (PDV). Topics include: data step efficiency, data step merges, new features available in SAS 9.2. Presentations will be geared either toward learning opportunities for newer SAS users or best practices for those with more experience.
Finance
Section Chairs
Jonas Bilenas, Barclays Global Retail Banking
Mark Keintz, Wharton Research Data Services
Finance-related applications and research constitute the second largest customer segment of SAS® users. This section provides insights into implementations of financial analysis tasks such as: portfolio evaluation, risk assessment and valuation, high frequency financial data analysis, credit scoring, and cash flow modeling. The finance section features papers that describe methods to perform these and similar tasks dealing with time-stamped or other financial data. Both advanced and beginner-levelpapers will be presented.
Graphics and Reporting
Section Chairs
Richard DeVenezia, Independent Consultant
Robert Schechter, SAS® Consultant
The Graphics & Reporting section has selected eleven informative papers that will demonstrate techniques you can use to transform your data into effective and aesthetically appealing output. The speakers will convey their insights on a wide range of material that includes SAS® Graphics Template Language (GTL), animating maps, constructing ArcGIS look-alike maps, waterfall charts, the Statistical Graphics (SG) family of procedures, a new trick for formatted Excel workbooks, creating multisheet Excel workbooks with the ODS ExcelXP tagset, choosing an ODS Style that best suits you, output as an interactive Java or ActiveX component in HTML, high volume reporting and ODS LAYOUT, and a SAS Institute presentation on ODS Essentials.
Hands-On Workshops
Section Chairs
Dalia Kahane, Westat
Harsha Kotian
Hands-On Workshops allow attendees to reinforce their understanding of presentation content byaccompanying the instructor through exercises and examples on a workshop computer. Workshoptopics include presentations onexporting SAS® data to Excel,SQL,SAS 9.2 graphics procedures, SAS macros, SASfunctions, data manipulation methods, and more. Hands-On Workshops are designed toaccommodate attendees at both the beginning and intermediate levels.
Large Data Sets
Section Chairs
Ed Heaton, Data and Analytic Solutions, Inc.
Mark Keintz, Wharton Research Data Services
Some programming practices that cause no real problems when working with smaller datasets (e.g., those with fewer than 256 columns and 10 million rows) can generate significant obstacles when working with large datasets. These include, but are not limited to: excessive I/O, extensive and high-maintenance scripts, network access and throughput constraints, inefficient retrieval of subsets, sparse data. The NESUG 2011 section on Large Data Sets presents papers on these topics using such techniques as hash lookup, formats, SGIO, the bufNo= option, the SAS® Bulk Loader, the Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) model, and the point= option. Although the topic is rather advanced, papers present solutions that range from those that are very simple to implement to advanced techniques. The papers are oriented as tutorials or as case studies.
Management & Administration
Section Chairs
Gary McQuown, Data and Analytic Solutions, Inc.
Parag Shiralkar, eClinical Solutions
The Management & Administration section covers a wide range of topics focused on best practices for increasing productivity from employees, processes, projects, and products related to the use of SAS® Software. Presentations reflect a management perspective or offer the outlook of the individual contributor. Today’s evolving business models must respond to increased globalization, standardization, accountability, out-sourcing, telecommuting, and electronic collaboration. In this environment, employees must sustain high productivity and efficiency while managers must adapt to managing in an ever changing environment. To cope with the current environment, SAS® users must continue to develop and expand their skills and grow professionally. Topics in this section range from optimizing operations in an evolving business environment with quality assurance, effective utilization of SAS for administration and management of data, knowledge management, SAS infrastructure maintenance, various certifications and other administrative facilities.
Pharma & Healthcare
Section Chair
Brian Schilling, Bogier Clinical and IT Solutions, Inc.
The Pharma & Healthcare section focuses on presentations using SAS® technologies to find solutions for analysis and reporting as it relates to drug/device discovery, disease prevention, patient care, the needs of insurance providers, as well as local and national healthcare agencies. This year we have Pharma and Healthcare offerings including: Clinical Trial Programming, data collection and storage according to CDISC standards through advanced statistical analysis methods, reporting results in regulatory submissions to regulatory agencies. In addition the impact of new policies and solutions for healthcare providers and insurers is discussed. Of special interest to both areas of the section is the impact of emerging and evolving standards. With the addition of HIPAA, healthcare reform, FDA regulations, and a host of other changes, SAS programmers are impacted by these changes in many ways. This section focuses on the needs of SAS programmers in these industries and in providing every-day, efficient, solutions.
Posters
Section Chairs
Louise Hadden, Abt Associates Inc.
Anastasiya Osborne, Farm Service Agency, USDA
The Posters section offers visual displays of presenters' concepts for NESUG 2011 attendees' inquisitive viewing. Viewers will have the opportunity to examine the material (either on screen or on a poster board) at their own pace and revisit it a number of times during the conference, as these displays will be on view throughout the conference from Sunday afternoon through Wednesday morning. In addition, presenters will be available at their displays from 5 to 6 on Tuesday evening in the Solutions Room during the conference to explain their work and answer questions.
The subject matter of poster presentations is varied but usually provides a visually pleasing and informative message - and that is one thing that makes a tour of them so interesting. This year we have an exciting and wide selection of topics including posters on advanced statistical sampling routines and graphing, PROC REPORT and ODS DOCUMENT, epidemiology, macros, arrays, web-based table generators, and more.
PROC FORMAT
Section Chair
Jonas Bilenas, Barclays Global Retail Banking/UK
The FORMAT procedure is a very useful and powerful procedure in SAS. Not only does it allow you to generate user defined look-up tables, it can aid you in merging large data sets without having to sort the large data set. PICTURE formats are also useful for modifying numeric data for output and for working with date and time variables. The NESUG 2011 Format Section will feature papers that describe applications of PROC FORMAT and illustrate the simplicity of generating your own user defined FORMATS, INFORMATS, and PICTURE FORMATS.?
PROC SQL
Section Chair
Ed Heaton, Data and Analytic Solutions, Inc.
The SQL procedure provides access to data sets using industry-wide standards not inherent in the DATA step. These standards are generally portable to other relational database systems; the skills learned can be applied in those other environments and the scripts can be explicitly or implicitly passed from SAS® to other RDBMS. Furthermore, PROC SQL provides direct access to the DICTIONARY tables – a set of SAS® tables that store metadata or control the SAS® System and its processing. SQL provides its own challenges and rewards. For example: standard SAS name list syntax does not work in SQL, data sets can be joined (merged) on a key with very simple syntax, macro variables can readily be generated from the data, nesting of queries can provide relatively simple solutions to complex problems, SQL pass-through (both implicit and explicit) can move work from SAS to the RDBMS – or even Microsoft® Excel® for more efficiency. The NESUG 2011 section on PROC SQL presents papers on these topics using such techniques as explicit SQL pass-through, the into directive, recursive joins, and fuzzy matches, as well as efficiencies. This is essentially a tutorials section, although some papers are presented as case studies.
Statistics & Analysis
Section Chairs
George Hurley, The Hershey Company
Stan Legum, Westat
The Statistics and Analysis section covers the use of SAS® in applied statistical, analytical, epidemiological, and survey methods across a variety of industries, such as consumer packaged goods, health care and pharmaceuticals, government, and advertising. Papers illustrate both business and research implementations. Most papers illustrate approaches to satisfying a research or business need, including an analytic or statistical method for addressing the need and demonstrating a SAS implementation of that method.