What is SAS?
Full form for SAS is “Statistical Analysis Software”, SAS is also known as “Decision making Analysis”. So what is SAS system? A SAS system is an integrated system of software products that enables user to perform Data entry, retrieval, management, report writing and Graphics, Statistical and mathematical analysis, Business planning, forecasting and decision making, Operations research ams project management, quality improvements and application development.
SAS began at North Caroline State University as a project to analyze agricultural research and founded in 1976 to help all customers. SAS software will provide operations in various sectors like Automotive, Communication, Education, Banking / Financial Services, Government, Health Insurance, Health care providers, Hospitality & Entertainment, Insurance, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Media, Oil & Gas, Retail, Hotels, Utilities and many more.
SAS Institute Inc[https://www.sas.com/en_us/home.html] a private company ” devoted to the maintenance and further development of SAS.” They opened offices in building #2806 Hillsborough Street, across from the university. By 1980, the growing company building capacity is not sufficient in Hillsborough Street building and then moved to the site of it’s Headquarters office, Raleigh in Cary, North Carolina.
SAS software can work in different Operating systems like windows, Mac, Dos, Z/OS, Unix and other various unix flavours. By 1990 SAS company grow with employ force of 7000 and now SAS celebrates 42nd anniversary. SAS has been named one of FORTUNE magazine’s “100 Best companies to work for”.
Multivendor Architecture
SAS is multi vendor architecture, which means it allows programs to be written once and run anywhere, regardless of hardware and operating system (OS). It also provides hardware independence and flexible implementation.
Multi Database Architecture
SAS software is a multi database architecture, which means it can connect to any kind of data source like databases to read the data. It can read data from different databases like Oracle, SQL server, DB2, Sysbase, Teradata, Informix etc.
Why SAS is used?
SAS is a flexible and extensible programming language designed for data access, data transformation and reporting. The purpose of SAS software is as follows :
- Data access and data management.
- Application development for Client.
- It provides business solutions.
- ETL.
- Analytics.
- Reporting and graphics.
- Visualisation and discovery.
- Web enablement.
SAS functionality
The functionality of the SAS system is build around the four-driven tasks. They are
- Data access : Addresses the data required by the application by reading raw data from source to SAS application.
- Data Management : It converts the data into any required format required by the application.
- Data Analysis : SAS system analyses the data by using various procedure like sum, mean, std, freq etc.
- Data presentation : Data presentation is that how you are going to present the output to endusers or customers.
How Raw data is converted into Information in SAS System.
A SAS program is a sequence of steps that the user submits for execution. In SAS programming, user should create DATA step (source) and PROC step (Analyse the data).
DATA Step
A data step is that which creates or modifies data using input data types like raw data or a SAS data set. Output from a Data step will be Data set or a report.
- Data step inserts data into a SAS data set.
- It computes values and check for correct errors.
PROC Step
PROC means Procedure step, it analyses input data like SAS data set and produces output such as reports or an updated data set.
- PROC Step creates reports.
- Creates summary reports.
- Produces plots and charts.