My Adventures with SAS 9.2 v2 and sexual harassment

FINALLY got a few minutes to download the latest version. For some reason the download I received was for the planned installation as opposed to the basic installation.

In 25 words or less, basic installation is for stand-alone installs on a single machine, which we have hundreds of users doing. The planned installation would be used if you had a meta-data repository, SAS on a server distributed to client machines or some other configuration which we did not have.

So, I have logged in as SAS administrator, downloaded the download manager, applied the order number and key, created a software depot and — nothing.

After slogging through several documents, I realized that we had been sent the wrong thing. Either that, or one of the right things telling us how to use this for a non-planned installation, had been omitted. Got through right away to the lovely Angie McKinley from SAS who sent me a link how to skip the planning part and voila ! My deployment deploys and I now have SAS 9.2 v2 and Enterprise Guide 4.2 on a computer running Windows XP.

By the way, since I am taking this incredibly stupid required course on Workplace Harassment Prevention let me just specify that I do not actually know what Angie McKinley looks like and the lovely is referring to her helpfulness and is not in any way a reflection of ageist/sexist/gender-specificist/racist/lookist stereotypical intent. Come on, I am Hispanic, female and over 40. I believe as a group we are mostly accused of harassing our children for not calling often enough. (“Yes, I know you are covering the World Cup. So, what, they don’t have phones in South Africa?“)

SAS 9.2, which I am testing in between clicking on the stupid harassment training, is so far working well. Opened up an xslx file no problem. Tried Enterprise Guide 4.2 and
mudskipper1Hey wait a minute …. something looks different here…

First of all, there is no longer a DATA menu. Instead, under tasks, there is a FILTER and Sort. There is also a QUERY BUILDER which is where you now create new variables a.k.a. computed columns. Okay, so having just completed the docs on Enterprise Guide on my personal pages, I will need to go recreate them. This does not motivate me to do my little happy dance.

Other than having to redo a few pages I just finished, though, I cannot complain about EG 4.2, personally. With the FILTER & SORT and Query Builder, it looks more Access-ish.

So, what have we got here… a combination of SAS, SQL, Access, Excel and something that looks like the new ODS Graphics. SPSS users will find it WAY easier to move to Enterprise Guide than they would to SAS. Kind of like Esperanto, it has bits of everything to make it a little familiar to anyone who has experience with just about any fringe of data management and statistical software package. Except, unlike Esperanto, I think it will catch on. (You see, I used the Esperanto reference here rather than some breeding analogy so that no one could feel harassed. Except for maybe celibate people who speak Esperanto, but AFAIK they are not a protected class.)

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