Sunday, March 20, 2011

Using SAS as my makeshift alarm: Using sound function

I have trouble waking up early everyday. And the days when i forget to set alarm in my mobile, I might wake up two days later!!

I've overcome this problem after i discovered this the sound function in SAS. This function produces a beep sound for the specified frequency and time which are to be supplied as the arguments.

Now, lets see how we make the conventional alarm sound which would ring for 20 times:

data _null_;
do j=1 to 20;
   do i=1 to 4;
      sound(550,500);
   end;
   sleep(1000);
end;
run;

Now, if we schedule this code in a windows scheduler to run everyday at some designated time, SAS would take up the task of waking you up everyday.

I use this sound function more often at the end of my long running programs. It would beep after the completion of the program (yes.. pretty similar to the oven) so that we could do the needful actions.

Just to note that this is possible only with the Windows SAS and the sound function does not work in UNIX/Mainframes.

I would like to end this post by sharing with you, a brilliant application of this sound/sleep function: the composition of the "Ol Mac Donald" Song:

http://www2.sas.com/proceedings/sugi29/048-29.pdf

So.. Let the music begin!!!

Saturday, March 19, 2011

SASopedia gets a face lift

I know it was high time I did it... Hope this is more viewable...

Watch out for more posts in this space...

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Making SAS Interactive (Part 2): Using %window and %display

Its the world of GUI. And you are left nowhere if you don't provide the users, the luxury (or rather fulfill the basic needs) of giving a Graphical User Interface. This holds good even for SAS.

SAS came up with the tool called SAS/AF and SAS EG which provides the users with a brilliant GUI and thus making their lives so eeaasssy.. However, not many of us would have bumped into this brilliant macro tool called %WINDOW and %DISPLAY which is present in BASE SAS9 which satisfies the basic needs of having a GUI. Here I take a small dive into the SAS ocean again, exploring the functionalities of these two macros.

%WINDOW: This creates the basic window that needs to be popped up upon execution. We can specify the window attributes here like the color/width/height,etc. You could also specify the position of the text that is to be displayed and the input parameters that are to be read.

%DISPLAY: This actually invokes the window that has been defined in the %window program.

Below is a simple illustration of the %window and %display invocation:

%window test_win color=blue

/*dimension for the window*/
icolumn=15 irow=10
columns=90 rows=45


/*Content of the window*/
#3 @25 "My Window"
attr = rev_video
#5 @10 "Hello Pramod"
attr = underline
;


%display test_win;

The above code displays the output as shown below:



Below, I've demonstrated how we can use this to make SAS interactive. Most of the code is self explanatory, of course with a bit of help from the support.sas.com documentation available at: http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/mcrolref/61885/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a000206734.htm

/* Main window */

%window final color=gray

/*dimension for the window*/
icolumn=15 irow=10
columns=90 rows=75


/*Content of the window*/
#1 @25 "&error_msg"
#3 @15 "Hi &sysuserid." attr = rev_video color=blue @60 "Date: &sysdate9." attr = rev_video color=blue
#5 @25 "Welcome to the Reporting World" attr = rev_video

#8 @35 "Report List"
#11 @15 "1. Class listing" @50 "2. Class Report by Gender"
#13 @15 "3. Class Report by Age" @50 "4. Class freq"
#16 @15 "Enter your Choice:" @35 choice attr=underline
;


/* End of Window Final */

%macro execute;
%let choice=;%display final;

%if &choice=1 %then %do;
 proc print data=sashelp.class noobs;
 run;
%end;
%else %if &choice=2 %then %do;
 proc report data=sashelp.class nowd;
 columns sex height weight;
 define sex / group;
 define height /analysis;
 define weight / analysis;
 run;
%end;
%else %if &choice=3 %then %do;
 proc report data=sashelp.class nowd;
 columns age height weight;
 define age / group;
 define height /analysis;
 define weight / analysis;
 run;
%end;
%else %if &choice=4 %then %do;
 proc freq data=sashelp.class;
 tables sex*age /nocum nopercent;
 run;
%end;
%mend execute;

%execute
In the above code, I first display a list of things the use might be interested to see in the %window, and then %display this inside the macro execute. I also read his input into the macro variable choice and then based on his selection, I call the required procedure inside the macro execute.

The output of the above code is as shown below:


Upon entering the value 2 and hitting the enter button, we get the output as shown:




You could experiment more on this and let me know your suggestions/thoughts/ideas...