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Before discussing SAS software let’s consider two terms that SAS is actively using describing its software. The terms are “product” and “solution”. “Product” is the irreducible software that performs one particular function. For instance products are: DBMS’s, clients’ for DBMS, web portals, etc. “Solution” is a set of products that automates process in a particular business field. SAS for instance has solutions for banking, Telco, insurance, etc. As a rule, solutions contain predefined database schema, user interface and reports optimized for a particular task.

SAS offers numerous solutions. But all of them are combinations of products that are limited in number. Whenever you learn about new SAS solution it is easier to understand its functionality knowing what products it consists of. This article contains only product descriptions. SAS solutions will be discussed in the follow-up articles.

SAS Foundation

SAS groups some of its products into set called SAS Foundation. This set contains DBMS, software to connect to other DBMS, procedures for stat. analysis and etc. SAS Foundation is something that users can’t see but it performs main part of the work.

Base SAS

Base SAS is a file-based, non-transactional DBMS with its own data manipulation language. The language allows reading data from plain, XML, Excel files and creating reports in different formats like HTML, Excel, PDF, etc. Base SAS supports SQL. Therefore it is easy to start working with SAS if one already knows SQL.

SAS Macro

SAS Macro is an extension to the Base SAS language. SAS Macro supports variables, conditions and exceptions. For example it allows organizing cycles and different if conditions. It is also used to create stored procedures. SAS Macro is similar to PL language from Oracle or T-SQL from Sybase. Officially SAS Macro is a part of Base SAS product.

SAS/Share

SAS/Share allows several users to work with SAS DBMS simultaneously. It resolves transactions conflicts when several users update the same table.

SAS/ACCESS

SAS/ACCESS is a set of products to connect SAS to other DBMS. The most popular product from this set is SAS/ACCESS for ODBC that allows connecting to any DBMS that supports ODBC technology. SAS/ACCESS also contains products to connect to other DBMS directly without using ODBC. Among them is ACCESS for Oracle, ACCESS for Microsoft SQL Server, etc.

SAS/Connect

SAS/Connect enables interaction between SAS software installed on different computers. It allows one program to control other programs run on other hardware. It is used within systems where SAS is installed on several servers to ensure full CPU utilization.

SAS/STAT

It is the second most popular product after Base SAS. SAS/STAT contains a set of procedures for stat. analysis. It includes clustering, regression and hypothesis testing methods. Besides SAS/STAT that contains main stat. algorithms there are some SAS products developed for particular math problems.

SAS/ETS (Econometrics and Time Series)

SAS/ETS contains procedures for time series analysis and forecasting. Time series is a set of values of a variable at successive times. For example, daily sales volumes, transport volumes, etc.

SAS/HPF (High Performance Forecasting)

SAS/HPF extends SAS/ETS forecasting capabilities. SAS/ETS is not efficient when forecasting considerable number of time series at a time. That is because of the amount of time required to forecast each time series separately. SAS/HPF contains algorithms that select the “optimal” model automatically and allows excluding human intervention from the forecasting process. It is considered that time savings results in decrease of forecasts accuracy as “optimal” model does not always give the most accurate forecasts.

SAS/OR (Operations Research)

SAS/PR contains procedure to solve optimization problems. The problems where it is required to find function’s minimum/maximum having constrains on function variables values. It is widely used to solve so called transportation problems.

SAS/IML (Interactive Matrix Language)

SAS/IML is matrix manipulation language. It allows performing different math operations with matrixes ranging from simple like addiction and multiplication to more complexes like evaluation of rang, eigenvalues, and inverse matrix.

SAS/Graph

SAS/Graph extends Base SAS reporting functionality. It allows including into reports different types of diagrams and graphs. SAS/Graph supports Active X technology, which preserves reports interactivity while transferring reports into Microsoft products. E.g. it allows image rescaling and rotating as well as to change labels and fonts.

SAS/Maps

SAS/Maps extends SAS/Graph capabilities. It allows including images of countries and territories into SAS reports.

So far we have discussed some basic products that are part of SAS Foundation set. Let’s discuss user’s interface that enables user interaction with SAS Foundation products.

User interface

Add-in for Microsoft Office

Software allows working with SAS data warehouse using MS Excel. After installing Add-in for MS Office one will find new Excel menu to connect to SAS. The idea is that MS products are widely used. Integration with Microsoft allows creating reports using data from SAS data warehouse. One can modify them with Microsoft software and share it in a common format that a lot of people are familiar with. Any user can run the report again and verify results if needed. This product also provides Microsoft users with access to huge SAS library of math algorithms.

Enterprise Guide

EG is the main user interface to SAS data warehouse. However, EG is not just an environment for programming and viewing reports. It enables access to numerous stat. procedures using graphical user interface. EG also supports ETL diagrams where nodes can represent SAS code or stat. procedure. Moreover EG does not require knowledge of SQL, Base SAS or Macro languages.

Enterprise Miner

EM is another client to SAS data warehouse. Its main difference from EG is specialization on stat analysis. EM was developed to simplify statisticians work as much as possible. Work with EM is organized in projects. Every project is a set of ETL diagrams. The output of the diagram can be a table with forecast, probability of credit default, etc.

Most stat. software consists of wizards developed for each stat. algorithm. Wizards make one to assign variables roles, types etc. Anytime one wants to play with another algorithm he has to repeat the same steps of the other wizard.

EM allows one to assign variables types and roles when one adds table to the project. Therefore one does not need to repeat those steps when he runs another stat algorithm and can concentrate on algorithm tuning and results.

Forecast Server

Forecast Server is software for time series forecasting that extends SAS/ETS and SAS/HPF capability through graphical user interface. It also takes into account time series hierarchy. For instance sales in stores, cities and regions are all related to each other.

Forecast server supports calendar of events like weekends and holidays that may influence time series and can be taken into account. Software does not require programming skills or knowledge of SAS/ETS or SAS/HPF, hiding SAS procedures behind graphic user interface.

JMP

JMP is a name of a product as well as a subdivision of SAS Institute. JMP is stat software similar to Enterprise Guide but it doesn’t support ETL diagrams and was developed independently. JMP’s advantage is focus on quality graphics. At present SAS programmers are working on integration of JMP into family of SAS products. Today JMP can connect to SAS data warehouse and run some SAS procedures.

Apart from software for data analysis SAS has a number of products for data warehouse, web portals and applications development.

Development tools

ETL Studio

It is a graphical user interface to develop ETL processes. It represents ETL as a diagram that simplifies understanding of the process details: input/output data, main transformations etc. It does not require knowledge of any languages. One can create ETL diagrams using point and click interface.

OLAP Cube Studio

This software is for OLAP cubes creation and management. It supports MDX language. One can use OLAP cubes as a source of data like plain tables.

Information Map Studio

Software allows hiding data base structure and columns names from users letting them use business terms instead. The product was designed to reduce the IT department overload. When information maps are developed SAS users can create their own reports using terminology they are familiar with.

Information Delivery Portal

Works as a connector between web server (Apache) and other SAS products. Enables viewing of reports, tables and OLAP cubes using web interface.

AppDev Studio

It is an application development environment. It supports Java, ASP.NET, ActiveX, Visual Basic, C++, C#, etc. It also contains numerous classes that allow integration of developed applications with other SAS products.

Web Report Studio

Is a web based interface for development of reports including graphs and diagrams. It also allows publishing them on web portal. As many other SAS products Web Report Studio does not require programming skills. It has convenient point and click interface.

Administration tools

Management Console

It is a single graphical interface for SAS products administration. Besides SAS products tuning it also allow data access control and user accounts administration.

This article contains descriptions of the most popular SAS products. But there are many more SAS products available. You can find their descriptions on official SAS website.