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SAS leaders on high-performance analytics

Alison Bolen — Fri, 24 Feb 12 16:00:42 +0000

Everyone around SAS seems to be buzzing about high-performance analytics (HPA). As we're preparing for conferences, product launches and customer engagements, it's the main idea on almost everyone's mind. Along with that excitement and buzz, however, it's worthwhile to step back and look at how we got here, and to recognize what hasn't changed. Two SAS leaders, CTO Keith Collins and CMO Jim Davis have recently published blog posts that step away from the hype to talk about the benefits of high-performance analytics and look at what hasn't changed. In his post, Collins reminds us that the industry has always dealt with large data volumes:

Speaking from the perspective of somebody who’s been in this industry for many years, big data is not a new issue. We’ve been through this. We called it the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) before, and everybody debated on how big their data was. It’s not about how big it is. It’s about what you’re going to do with it. That’s why the exciting thing is big analytics – because it’s the analytics that help you do something with all of that data.

Likewise, Davis talks about high-performance as an enabler and says big data alone is not the answer:

A lot of big data proponents are promising things bigger, better and faster. But if the information you’re getting is backward looking, it’s still going to be looking at the past when you get it in a shorter timeframe. You’re still only understanding the past faster than before. No matter how fast you go with summary statistics, you’re never going to get to the future.

Both Collins and Davis recognize the value in high-performance analytics as something absolutely transformational, though. Collins says:

Banks are changing how they look at risk in risk portfolios, which allows them not just to understand risk at the end of the day but at the point where the transaction is occurring. Likewise, understanding fraud in the public sector is becoming easier. Or in the healthcare industry, we can actually do text mining across emergency medical service logs and start to identify disease outbreaks weeks earlier than you could by looking at hospital records. These are opportunities that we have now with this type of processing power.

And Davis also points to the predictive capabilities:

When you use high performance analytics to predict things like risk, customer satisfaction or marketing optimization, you’re getting your predictions sooner than before, and you can react more quickly. When you’re computing forward-looking results, the speed really can make a difference.

How do other industry veterans view the big data trend? Where is the hype and where is the value? This is day ten of my "HPA once a day" blog post series. To read more, see all of the high-performance analytics posts on this blog or follow the high-performance analytics rss feed.

Big data is nothing new, but high-performance analytics is

Keith Collins — Fri, 24 Feb 12 16:33:21 +0000

The most exciting thing in the industry right now is not “big data.” It’s “big analytics” or — as we like to call it — high-performance analytics. Speaking from the perspective of somebody who’s been in this industry for many years, big data is not a new issue. We’ve been through this. We called it the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) before, and everybody debated on how big their data was. It’s not about how big it is. It’s about what you’re going to do with it. That’s why the exciting thing is big analytics – because it’s the analytics that help you do something with all of that data. We’re going to start to see an amazing transformation as people understand the value of what they can do with the data they have. There’s been a real challenge as we look at the old architectures of our traditional EDWs, because those that were organized around transactions weren’t appropriate for analytics. This has been part of the heritage of SAS. We’ve known for a long time that you really have to organize the data for the way you want to get information out. Now this theory is being validated in the era of big data. More and more people in the industry are understanding the importance of organizing your data in order to process it as quickly as possible. Yes, it’s great that you can take a customer in retail from optimizing a problem with 270 million SKU combinations and going from 30 hours of process time to two hours. Fantastic. The time savings is important, but what you’ve really done is provided the organization with the ability to do scenario analysis. That’s even more important. Now that same retailer can really work to see if they have the best plan. Before, they worried about getting through the weekend so they could just have the inventory stocked through Monday. Now they can go through the simulations, they can actually see what the different opportunities are to shift their market and to get ahead of their competitors. As this example illustrates, one of the things I’m really excited about as we approach high performance analytics is the focus on the next business problems to solve. Now we can ask the question, where are the bottlenecks in the organization? And that’s really changing the outlook of our customers as they look forward. Take the example of how many accurate models can be created. We’ve had customers that went from being able to do just 50 models to doing a thousand models with the same staff of five analysts. Why does that matter? Again, it’s not the speed so much as the ability to ask – and answer – 20 times more questions and then change the business as a result. So now the percentage change you can make in the business – the lift in sales, the identification of the fraud and so on – goes up. So now you are really having a bottom-line impact on the company. With high performance analytics, we’re already seeing customers change their thought processes, change their businesses and change their approach to the data. Banks are changing how they look at risk in risk portfolios, which allows them not just to understand risk at the end of the day but at the point where the transaction is occurring. Likewise, understanding fraud in the public sector is becoming easier. Or in the healthcare industry, we can actually do text mining across emergency medical service logs and start to identify disease outbreaks weeks earlier than you could by looking at hospital records. These are opportunities that we have now with this type of processing power. Ultimately, you and I are going to benefit from these applications of analytics too. Our economies are stronger when the banks have a better understanding of risk. Our taxes are lower when the government lowers its fraud expenses. And our communities are healthier when disease outbreaks are pinpointed and treated earlier. That’s why I’m excited about high performance analytics – and why you should be too.

Get it right the first time!

Ritu Jain — Fri, 24 Feb 12 15:29:25 +0000

The Globe and Mail recently published an article on “How to Avoid Ticking off your Customers"- an interesting article that talks about understanding your customers’ online behavior by tracking certain things like open rate of your emails via email analytics to determine if your content is relevant. The question it raised in my mind was — if you are a small business — can you afford to tick off your customers? As a small business, your first concern should be how to find and retain a customer, not how to avoid ticking him off. To answer that question, you need to ask yourself, how well do you know your customers and your prospects? If you are a small boutique of specialty apparel, then chances are you know most your customers, maybe even by their first name. You know their size, you know their color preferences and more. But what if you are an online retailer of specialty merchandise with hundreds of thousands of customers — how do you track your customers’ likes and dislikes, changing preferences, interests and other attributes that are key to unlocking his/her thought process that can help you determine what he/she is going to react to more positively? How do you determine which offers will trigger a positive buying response? Business analytics can help you answer these questions. They can help you consolidate all your customer data to provide you a comprehensive view of the customer and analyze this data to deliver unique customer insights. You can leverage these insights to personalize and improve customer interactions across channels. Companies like Gilt Groupe, Golfsmith International and Twiddy & Co. are doing it today — to better understand their customers, increase their campaign response rates and improve customer service in general. And they are growing – fast!! As a small business, you have limited dollars. You need to start at the right place — fix a problem before it even occurs. Invest in those analytical solutions that help you better understand your customers from the get go – then you wouldn’t need to invest in ones that help you avoid losing them. Ronald Reagan once said “information is the oxygen of the modern age.” He was right! With the world economy on this roller coaster ride – you would rather be on the side that got it right the first time than the ones that are trying to fix mistakes. Who knows if you will even get that chance?

Celebrate your own free copy of my book "Building Business Intelligence Using SAS"

Angela Hall — Fri, 24 Feb 12 10:24:17 +0000

Well, we can't really afford to give everyone a free copy of the Building Business Intelligence Using SAS: Content Development Examples. But copies will be presented to two randomly selected participants of today's AllAnalytics.com eChat! Then you can be a part of the celebrations! Yes, that's right! People have been so wonderful they have been sharing their excitement about the book, even one twitter colleague got help from his son!

Mark your calendars for 2pm Eastern Today Friday February 24, 2012

eChat is via Web Browser (recommend using Internet Explorer) at: http://www.allanalytics.com/messages.asp?piddl_msgthreadid=246154 Tip: If you are new to AllAnalytics.com, set up your username & password before the event so you can ask those burning questions about the SAS BI toolset! Maybe you are considering a purchase and you want some advise? Maybe you are just getting started with the tools and have an issue that is stumping you? It's going to be a fun e-chat! I know the readers are active and curious - certainly they will keep us on our toes!

Can a Movie About Analytics Sweep the Oscars?

Amy Chesebrough — Fri, 24 Feb 12 10:29:05 +0000

Hi everyone! My name is Amy Chesebrough and I’m excited to be a contributing author on our Customer Analytics blog. I’m a journalist by degree, but admittedly this is my very first blog post! For the past 7 years I’ve been fortunate enough to manage field marketing strategies and campaigns for a lot of fun industries: casinos, hotels, sports, media, travel/transportation and communications. Is it just me or does anyone else think that gone are the days where analytics are just for the number crunchers? It’s a brave new world where the value of analytics is being discovered by corporations across all industries seeking to differentiate, innovate, cut costs, and thrive. In fact, the topic is Hollywood bound and high glamour in Moneyball, nominated for six coveted Academy Awards during this weekend’s annual Oscar celebration. Based on a true story, the movie highlights the 2002 Oakland A’s baseball team, and specifically their General Manager, Billy Beane, who went against the conventional wisdom of his experienced scouts to build a low-budget, winning team by trusting the science of analytics. He recruited 25 guys, out of 20,000 possibilities, who were perceived to be from the “land of misfit toys” by scouts because of age, bad pitching form, inability to catch, etc. But analytics told a different story -- they all had a knack for getting on base, and that offensive strategy wins games. The rest, as they say, is history and the winning record of the Oakland A’s is the proof in the pudding that analytics work! Some analytic applications that I’ve seen with sports teams and leagues today relate to better understanding customer (fan) behavior and tailoring their experiences while at the venue. Segmented demographics can be targeted differently with marketing offers based on a better understanding of their lifestyles, what motivates them, and preferences discovered using customer analytics. The Orlando Magic is one such organization that trusts the science of analytics to build its customer base, turn casual fans in to avid fans, and provide a game-day experience that leaves them wanting more! Check out this video that talks about how Orlando Magic uses SAS to grow their fan base. It’s also more critical than ever in today’s economy to demonstrate the value of attending a sports event in person as ticket prices rise. Another hot topic is dynamically pricing tickets. Analytics helps teams evaluate ticket sales and pricing as well as what drives a season ticket holder’s decision to renew. How do you get a single game buyer to come back to another game or consider purchasing season tickets? It all points back to improving the fan experience by broadening their sense of perceived value when the opportunity presents itself. And this doesn’t just hold true for this industry, but more broadly applies to businesses in every industry that strive to increase value of their products or services for customers. This different YouTube clip shares another Orlando Magic perspective on the topic. And finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that in this day and age of all things social media, enthusiastic fans are easier to reach than ever as they interact online and on social networks. There is so much untapped data from this channel that can be analyzed to help teams and businesses better understand fan behavior and identify ways to reach ticket holders with meaningful offers. In fact, Super Bowl champs, the New York Giants, are a great example. They touted this year’s Super Bowl as the “first ever Social Media Super Bowl.” The Giants have focused on creating two-way communication to build fan interaction by doing things like running Facebook campaigns and streaming Twitter feeds into their telecasts and inside the stadium. As a result, by February 20, 2012, they had 260,000 followers on Twitter and nearly 2 million fans on Facebook. What an amazing opportunity to tap into this massive amount of data using social media analytics. So, as the Academy Awards draw near, and we go to our respective Oscar parties or sit down with our popcorn to watch the red carpet parade and root for our favorites to win, I’ll be pulling for Moneyball, in part because it’s a great story with a present-day message that could drastically reshape the way companies do business, and in part (a little larger part) because I’m a Brad Pitt fan! Maybe Mike Stevens, CMO for the New York Giants, will be watching too! Just imagine how much more the Giants could do with a 360 degree profile of their fans, by combining their online and social media activity with their offline data. Now that’s customer analytics at its best!

For more information on how SAS can help drive sports teams and leagues forward, visit SAS® for Sports.
For executives, you can also hear from Orlando Magic live on stage at SAS Global Forum Executive Conference, April 22 – 25, in Orlando, Florida.

Please let me know what you think by adding your own comment below. Thank you for following!

Stay nerdy, my friends!

Arati Korwar — Fri, 24 Feb 12 09:18:19 +0000

Last week, a JMP user posted a funny comment on LinkedIn about JMP. It was a takeoff on the amusing Dos Equis commercials about the Most Interesting Man in the World. According to the ads, the Most Interesting Man has lived a life so remarkable that, for instance, "he can speak French in Russian" and "police often question him just because they find him interesting." As a writer and former grammar instructor, I adore this line from one of the ads: "People hang on his every word, even the prepositions." At the end of some of the ads showing his extraordinary exploits like arm wrestling a dictator and releasing a bear from a trap, the Most Interesting Man says, "I don't always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis. Stay thirsty, my friends." Inspired by these ads, Jason Chavarry, a JMP user on the HR analytics team at The Hershey Company, commented on a post in LinkedIn about JMP: "I don't always Stepwise Regress my large data sets, but when I do.... I do it with JMP. Stay Nerdy my friends.... #DosEquis" I shared it with a few colleagues, who used the same theme to come up with a couple additional quips for our life sciences software:

"I don’t always create linkage maps for my experimental populations, but when I do, I do it with JMP Genomics. Stay inbred, my friends." (Kelci Miclaus)
I don’t always analyze CDISC-compliant data, but when I do, I prefer JMP Clinical. Stay standardized, my friends." (Richard Zink)

And now I throw it out to you, my friends. I want to hear your own JMP-related version of this pop-culture meme.

Friday's Innovation Inspiration - Mining customer satisfaction

Waynette Tubbs — Fri, 24 Feb 12 09:00:22 +0000

How are you determining customer satisfaction? How do you move the needle? This SAS user mines the unstructured data in patient surveys with SAS Text Miner. This technique can be applied across industries to gather insights from customer behaviors. You can even understand customer emotions and sentiment. Kathy Lange and Saratendu Sethi, from SAS, presented a paper for SAS Global Forum 2011 where they discussed the use of SAS Sentiment Analysis and SAS Text Miner to uncover good and bad feedback. The paper discusses lessons learned from real projects. Read, "What Are People Saying about Your Company, Your Products, or Your Brand?" If you are interested in text mining capabilities, follow Richard Foley (a genius in that arena) and his Text Frontier blog.

Hospitality industry outlook for 2012

Natalie Osborn — Thu, 23 Feb 12 23:35:27 +0000

We are just putting the finishing touches on our SAS and CHR joint webcast for February. In this webcast, entitled “Hospitality Industry Outlook 2012”, we asked four industry thought leaders about the issues that will most impact the industry in 2012. The webcast will be available for viewing on demand next week. Featured in the webcast, are: Rohit Verma PhD, Executive Director, Cornell Center for Hospitality Research, Cornell; Neal Fegan, CRME, Executive Director Revenue Management, Fairmont Raffles Hotels & Resorts International; Howard Chong, PhD, Assistant Professor, School of Hotel Administration, Cornell and Alex Dietz, Principal Product Manager, Hospitality and Travel Global Practice, SAS. In addition, Kelly McGuire, PhD, Executive Director, Hospitality and Travel Global Practice, SAS, will join our host Karin Reed in the studio to comment on the implications of the issues raised by the thought leaders. Would you like a sneak peek at the topics being covered? Dr. Rohit Verma writes often on issues affecting the hospitality industry. Rohit spends some time in the webcast re-visiting some of his past predictions, as well as talking about the trends that he believes will impact the industry in 2012. Hot at the top of the list? How hotels work with travel intermediaries, the movement towards mobile, and the globalization of the hotel industry. Neal Fegan has developed a unique revenue management leadership development program geared to recent university graduates. The goal of the program is to generate interest in the subject both inside and outside of hospitality schools in revenue management careers, and to increase the number of highly-qualified revenue management personnel working in the industry. Neal spoke about the success he has seen so far with the program and why he would like all of his competitors to be doing the same thing. Dr. Howard Chong discussed sustainability programs and how they affect customer choices when it comes to hotels. He talked about whether hospitality executives can expect higher rates as a result of their sustainability efforts, and the biggest challenges to overcome when implementing sustainability initiatives. Alex Dietz explored some new advances in pricing technology. He talked about how he is focused on incorporating competitive pricing information into revenue management decisions, in order to increase the adoption of pricing technology and analytics by the hospitality and travel industries. Great stuff – and I look forward to sharing the details of the webcast next week and answering your questions here in the comments.

Let's go to PharmaSUG!

Julie Petlick — Thu, 23 Feb 12 14:28:20 +0000

In my role, I get to meet lots of students with a variety of SAS skills and career aspirations. For those of you studying in fields associated with the pharmaceutical or healthcare industry, you definitely want to consider coming to the PharmaSUG 2012 conference. You will learn how you can apply your SAS skills to the challenges of the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, and can also network with other SAS users in the industry. PharmaSUG is offering a Student Scholarship Program designed to support students interested in attending the conference. This year’s conference will be held May 13-16 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square in San Francisco, California. For more information on the scholarship and how to apply, visit the PharmaSUG website . The application deadline is March 14^th. A message from Ellen Brookstein, PharmaSUG scholarship coordinator: PharmaSUG is the only industry specific SAS User Group so you definitely should consider applying for a scholarship! We offer seminars and hands on workshops for industry professionals at all levels from novices to seasoned experts. Our presenters are the best in the business including many published SAS authors who always enjoy chatting with their fans, as well as experts from SAS Institute. We get you immediately involved since part of the deal is that you agree to volunteer in some capacity at the conference. Volunteering is one of the best ways to network and connect to people in the industry. But will you have a good time? Yes, we make sure of that! You are treated like a VIP and you will get to attend all kinds of parties with great food, drink and new friends. And don’t forget, you will be in San Francisco! I promise we will send you home with new knowledge, renewed excitement about your career and a bunch of new great friends and colleagues. (and maybe even a new IPod. Did I forget to mention all the prizes we give out at closing session?)

Time to tell your analytics story

Shelley Sessoms — Thu, 23 Feb 12 12:22:11 +0000

Predictive Analytics World is a little over a week away. I hope you’re planning to be in San Francisco for this exciting conference. This is the first time that SAS Publishing will participate in the event, and I am really looking forward to it. We’re teaming up with the Analytics team within SAS to bring you an experience unlike any other. The SAS Storyboards will be the place to share ideas, and see them take shape in real time. Visual practitioners will be on-hand to bring life to the many discussions taking place. As a representative of SAS Publishing, I’ll be displaying some of our most popular analytics titles. And I’ll have a preview copy of author Bill Franks’ new book, “Taming the Big Data Tidal Wave: Finding Opportunities in Huge Datasets with Advanced Analytics.” Franks will also hold a 20-minute Q&A to discuss his upcoming book. In addition to displaying books, I’m looking for new authors. If you have an idea for a book, or have an analytics story you want to share, I hope you’ll stop by the SAS Storyboards. It’s going to be THE place to be at the conference.

Higher performance, lower risk with grid computing

Alison Bolen — Thu, 23 Feb 12 09:48:47 +0000

The Grid Manager Plug-In allows you to monitor and manage grid jobs, hosts and queues.

The volatile financial markets leave no wiggle room for risk. Or second thoughts. We need the right answers to some tough questions, and we need them now. There is zero tolerance for errors. And no time for delays. Samsung Securities gets it. That's why they've boosted their SAS solution for enterprise risk management with high-performance analytics. Using SAS Grid Computing, Samsung Securities expects to increase overall risk-calculation throughput by 30 percent -- while improving the accuracy of the analyses. “Powered by leading grid and cluster management solutions from Platform Computing, SAS Grid Manager enables powerful and timely analysis within enterprise analytic environments for critical business decisions across numerous sectors,” says Tripp Purvis, Vice President of Business Development at Platform Computing. “Extending our longstanding North American partnership into Asia Pacific will help customers across Asia make better decisions by leveraging their data in a flexible, highly available environment.” This is day nine of my "HPA once a day" blog post series. To read more, see all of the high-performance analytics posts on this blog or follow the high-performance analytics rss feed. (Barry Gay, Shannon Heath and Kris Balic also contributed to this post.)

Privacy bargain and big data security

Mark Troester — Thu, 23 Feb 12 10:33:20 +0000

I recently presented a session on big data at the 13th Annual Privacy and Security hosted by the Province of British Columbia and held in Victoria. There were a number of interesting discussions and presentations that relate to privacy and security ramifications of big data. The discussion was timely given the recent news about privacy and big data implementations, including coverage by the New York Times. Although I understand the desire to leverage a hot topic like big data to drive interest, I feel most of the security and privacy considerations are more appropriately driven by the business discipline that is being utilized. For example, privacy and security policies and approaches related to “one to one” marketing or personalization are not a big data issue, they are a customer management issue. In this context, striking the correct balance between leveraging personal information to provide better service vs. being too invasive needs to be hammered out by marketing, legal, IT, etc. While the approach needs to be extended to accommodate big data, it’s not a big data security issue per se. Although the conference was not focused on big data, there was plenty of interest and discussion about the impact and potential for big data, most in the context of what it can do for government.

Dr. Margaret MacDiarmid, Minister of Labour, Citizens’ Services and Open Government, spoke about how they have made 2,400 datasets available to the public as part of their open government policies.
Cory Doctorow, editor of BoingBoing, spoke about the privacy bargain, the notion of providing personal information for better service. He explained that “we are bad at determining the future impact of providing personal information now” and noted that the “privacy bargain should not be based on people not knowing how to use their computer”.

My session addressed the potential impact of big data in the government sector and how big data can help drive improvements in Public Health, Service & Public Trust, Innovation & Efficiency, and Open Government. I addressed several considerations for success in big data, including:

Starting with ensuring common goals and alignment across the organization about the impact of analytics
Extending your enterprise architecture approach to accommodate big data, vs. defining an independent big data strategy
Leveraging a strategic information management approach, and extending that discipline to big data
Devising a resource plan that will ensure that you have the necessary analytic skills such as data scientists, educating IT on the analytics lifecycle, etc.
Extending your governance, security, and privacy efforts to incorporate big data.

Although time was limited, I also introduced a framework or set of considerations relating to privacy and security. The overall message was that they shouldn’t devise a separate security approach for big data, they should extend or augment what they already have in place so that big data is a natural part of their overall security plan. We discussed that security should be comprehensive, and that big data considerations should be factored into the design, implementation and monitoring aspects of their security framework. And no surprise that there were several questions about Hadoop. We discussed that since the Hadoop security features are not well established or completely hardened at this point, that special considerations need to be put in place for data that is stored, processed and analyzed in Hadoop. But we’ll have to defer a more specific discussion around Hadoop for a later post.

We want JMP Discovery Summit papers & posters

Jessica Marquardt — Thu, 23 Feb 12 09:30:35 +0000

I know you haven’t forgotten to pencil in Discovery Summit 2012, which will be held Sept. 10 – 13 at SAS world headquarters in Cary, NC. It’s a week spent benchmarking and networking with fellow JMP users, a valuable opportunity that would be a shame to miss. And here’s a way to get even more out of the experience: present a paper or poster. JMP users are second to none when it comes to solving problems through data exploration and analysis. And that’s why every year the Discovery Summit Steering Committee invites you to submit a paper or poster abstract demonstrating how you’ve used JMP to face a challenge head on. Selected entrants will present at the conference alongside outstanding keynotes who are thought leaders in statistics, technology and innovation (more to come on that!). Other perks include complimentary conference admission and the chance to gather feedback from other attendees so you can refine your own analyses. The steering committee is looking for presentations that describe real-world problems solved by the strategic implementation of analytic methods and statistical techniques and, of course, show JMP interactively. See the complete list of information and guidelines. The call for papers closes Friday, March 23, at 5 p.m. ET. We can’t wait to see your state-of-the-art ideas!

Dashboard graphs revisited

Sanjay Matange — Thu, 23 Feb 12 00:07:00 +0000

Here is the promised follow up on the Dashboard graph. In the previous article, I posted the code to create a panel of bullet KPIs displaying three different metrics. For each KPI, I used 5 columns of data which resulted in a wide and inconvenient structure. A more convenient data structure is shown below. In this case, the data for each KPI is classified by the name of the metric. Any one metric can have fewer or more observations. For a large panel of KPIs, this data structure is more manageable and extensible. This data structure works really well for a LAYOUT DATALATTICE where we can just assign the ROWVAR=Metric. The layout would automatically generate the three cells for us, and use the appropriate subset of the data for each cell. The restriction is that contents of each cell will have the same structure. That is not the case here, as we can see the second row has a reverse axis. Also, we are using custom labels on the left of each KPI. So, to make this custom layout we need to use a LAYOUT LATTICE. Every plot statement in a LAYOUT LATTICE will "see" all the observations of a column. So, we need a way to subset the data used for each cell to only the observations with the same value of the "Metric" variable. The way to do this is to use the ifc() and ifn() functions. The usage is as follows:

  x=eval (ifc (metric eq 'Revenue', metric, ' '));
  y=eval (ifn (metric eq 'Revenue', value, .));

In the usage above, the first parameter expression is evaluated, and if true, the second parameter is returned. If false, the third parameter is returned. So, now the code needed to draw the BarCharts and ScatterPlots in each cell is as follows:

  barchart x=eval(ifc(metric EQ 'Revenue', metric, ' ')) y=level /
           orient=horizontal;
  scatterplot x=eval(ifn(metric EQ 'Revenue', target, .))
              y=eval(ifc(metric EQ 'Revenue', metric , ' '));

Note: Since ORIENT=Horizontal, the X & Y roles for BarChart are flipped. X is used for vertical axis, and Y for horizontal. We should really think of X as Category and Y as Response. Using these eval functions for the X and Y roles of the plot statements, each cell will still see all the observations. However, the observations not matching the value "Revenue" will be set to missing. One point to remember is that for a ScatterPlot, the data range for each axis is computed independently based on all the data seen for that axis. So, we have to use the IFN() function to also set the unnecessary values for the linear axis to missing. I have also added the use of a dynamic to control the color of the needle so the same template will work both for LISTING and JOURNAL style. I am sure there is plenty of scope to further automate this program with macro code. Here are the graphs. Style=Listing: Style=Journal: Full SAS 92 Code

SAS Report: You're soaking in it

Chris Hemedinger — Wed, 22 Feb 12 22:11:18 +0000

Do you want your report to look good on the web, or to look good when you print it? Pick one. Before the SAS Report file format, that was the choice that you faced. HTML is perfect for the web browser. It's easy to scroll through tables, to apply an attractive color scheme, and to interact with graphical output. But if you try to print it, it's a mess. Tables don't always fit on a page, page numbering is nonsensical, and your colors get lost. If you want printed output, PDF is the way to go. Your output is optimized for the printed page. Tables, if they don't fit on a single page, have repeating column headers on subsequent pages. You can control whether it's landscape or portrait. But to view it on the web, you need a special browser plugin. If you try to share sections of content with copy/paste operations, you can end up with some funky results. SAS Report combines the best of these two mainstay formats into a single destination. In my Chunky-soup-style slogan, "SAS Report views like HTML and prints like PDF." If you use SAS Enterprise Guide, SAS Web Report Studio, or SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office, then you already use SAS Report format. (You're soaking in it, metaphorically...though it might not result in softer hands.) Here's a partial list of where SAS Report makes an appearance:

It's the default output format for results in SAS Enterprise Guide (version 4.2 and later).
It's the format for report definitions in SAS Web Report Studio, which are stored as SRX files (SAS Report XML).
It's how the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office pulls SAS output into your Microsoft Office client (such as Excel), and keeps the substance of your result while allowing you to apply custom formatting using Office features. How does that work? The SAS Report format actually keeps the data (substance) separate from the appearance (layout and style), so it's easier for the Add-In to keep them straight.
It's an ODS destination (ODS tagsets.sasreport12) that can feed content to all of these client applications from any SAS program.

SAS Report is the lingua franca of SAS business intelligence applications. You can share your SAS Enterprise Guide report with SAS Web Report Studio. In the SAS Add-In for Office, you can open reports that were created in SAS Web Report Studio or SAS Enterprise Guide. SAS Report output can also be pulled apart and combined to create entire new reports. The Report Builder in SAS Enterprise Guide (File->New->Report) allows you to take output from different tasks and programs within your project, and combine these into a report definition that shows just the pieces you want to share. You can even design the report with side-by-side layouts, add text and graphics, and control how the report fits on a page. SAS Report may be a proprietary SAS file format, but that doesn't tie your content to SAS client applications. You can use SAS Enterprise Guide to save the report to PDF or HTML when you need to share with colleagues who are less fortunate (who don't have access to SAS). And of course, you can "print" SAS Web Report Studio reports to PDF. And here's another little trick: SAS Report doesn't just print nicely -- it also copies nicely. In SAS Enterprise Guide, you can right-click on a table or graph in the SAS Report viewer and select Copy, then Paste into a Microsoft Office document (such as a spreadsheet or Word doc). SAS Enterprise Guide puts well-formed HTML "on the clipboard", and that's readily accepted by Office applications. (Hat tip to Tricia for reminding me how cool this feature can be.)