How to Find Answers: Using SAS® Resources

Helen Carey, Carey Consulting, Kaneohe, HI

Ginger Carey, Carey Consulting, Kaneohe, HI

Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
—Samuel Johnson

Abstract
The vast amount of information on the SAS System, particularly that available through the Web, can be overwhelming.
Knowing where to find the information you need saves time and frustration. This paper is about the variety of
information and media available and describes where to learn more about SAS software and to find answers to your
SAS questions.

Introduction
Not having the information you need when you need it leaves you wanting. Not knowing where to look
for that information leaves you powerless. In a society where information is king, none of us can afford
that. —Lois Horowitz
Information about SAS comes from many sources and is contributed by many people, including professional writers,
SAS developers, conference presenters, and people asking and replying to questions on the discussion groups
SAS-L and SAS Forums. If you only use SAS Institute’s Customer Support Center (support.sas.com), you are
missing a wide range of resources.
sasCommunity.org, announced at SAS Global Forum 2007, is a collaborative Web site where you can access and
contribute SAS information. sasCommunity.org is covered in the section Community but features of
sasCommunity.org are referenced throughout this paper.
Also, we refer to papers from conferences, information located at SAS Institute’s Web site, and sample SAS code
throughout this paper. See the section Community on how to access conference papers.
Wherever Web sites are referenced in the paper, you can click on the underlined name to link to the site. The look
and feel of the site or even the existence of the page may have changed since this paper was written. Search the
Web with very specific search terms to try to find the page if a referenced page is no longer available. We have given
this paper a number of times at WUSS. There are numerous changes on the Internet and to this paper from one year
to the next. For example, since last year, the SAS Customer Support Center has been completely revamped.
An excellent way to learn about a procedure or feature is via examples. How to access sample SAS code is
discussed in most sections of this paper because sample SAS code are located in many places from resources on
the Web to code written at your company. Once you find sample code that you want to run, usually you just need to
select and copy the code into the editor window of your SAS session or your program file, verify that you have all
needed data, check that the libnames and filenames that point to data are correct for your operating system and then
submit the code.

BEDROCK
Using BEDROCK (meaning foundation) as an acrostic, we have divided SAS resources into these seven sections
(with the page number in parentheses):

B – Books (2)
E – Education (3)
D – Documentation and SAS System Help (4)
R – Resources at SAS Institute’s Web Site (7)
O – Other Web Sites (11)
C – Community (14)
K – Keep Learning (16)

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Books
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. —Mark Twain

“What was the last computer book you purchased? Why? What is your favorite all time computer book? Why?” These
questions appear as potential interview questions in the SESUG 2005 paper HIRE POWER. Your answers could
indicate whether you are willing to invest in learning more and keeping up with your profession.
Books are an excellent way to learn about a new topic and to use for reference. Books may seem expensive
compared to getting information from the Web for free. However, consider the time saved by referencing the needed
information concisely and thoroughly presented in a book versus spending literally hours searching the Web for
information. In particular, you will save yourself time and frustration when you find and use those books that teach
you how to use a specific tool, such as macros or Output Delivery System. Books often have examples with
explanations.
SAS Titles. SAS Publishing at SAS Institute produces books written by SAS staff. In 1976 there was one SAS
manual, A User's Guide to SAS 76. It consisted of 330 pages and documented the 33 procedures in SAS 76. In 1996,
there were more than 340 manuals and more than 100,000 pages. Today, in addition to even more books on SAS,
many of the titles are available online for free. However, many getting-started type books and example type books
are not available online. See the Documentation section of this paper for information about online documentation and
help.
SAS Publishing has produced an excellent book for beginning and intermediate programmers called Step-by-Step
Programming with Base SAS® Software. It is a how-to guide on using DATA step programming and base SAS
procedures with many examples and explanations. This book can be purchased as a soft-cover book. Also SAS Help
and Documentation from the Help Window of SAS (Contents tab >SAS Products >Base SAS) and the SAS Customer
Support Center contain the title Step-by-Step Programming with Base SAS® Software.
To order books online and track your order, visit SAS Publishing at the SAS Customer Support Center. It is easy to
find. Go to the SAS Customer Support Center (support.sas.com), and click on Bookstore under LEARNING CENTER
in the left sidebar. You can search for topics and get the book’s description, price and other items, such as the
book’s table of content, a sample chapter and SAS code used in the book. You can read book reviews and browse
information about the authors.
SAS Press. SAS Press publishes books written by SAS users. In fact, SAS Press was formerly known as Books by
Users. These books cover a variety of topics from beginning books to those on specific topics, such as using SAS in
the health care industry. A SAS Press book can be a time-saver. If you like to learn by example, many of the SAS
Press books are written in that format, such as Proc Tabulate by Example.
SAS COM. Subscribe to the Institute’s free quarterly print magazine as a print or Web version. To subscribe, you
must logon to your SAS Profile. If you do not have a profile, you will need to create a login. To do this, go to
www.sas.com and click on Resource Center in the upper right corner. In the right sidebar under MY PROFILE, click
on Establish a login. At the Resource Center, you can manage your subscriptions to SAS e-newsletters and also view
white papers and Webcasts on specific technologies.
Computer Books. Also consider general computer books and books specific to your industry. Browse your
bookstore, college bookstore, company library, and online for useful computer books. The online bookstores usually
have reviews of the books by readers. Amazon.com sells SAS books by other publishers and books published by
SAS Institute. For example, you can find SAS for Dummies (a book about SAS Enterprise Guide), written by SAS
employees Stephen McDaniel and Chris Hemedinger. Occasionally, Amazon will offer some of the SAS books at a
discount. Also check out the category SAS Books at SasCommunity (sascommunity.org/wiki/Category:SAS_Books.).
Which Books Will Be Useful To You? One way to decide which books will be useful to you is to browse the books
in the publications area of the Demo Area at SAS conferences. Another way is to visit the online bookstore at SAS
Publishing. You can check out some books using Google book search (books.google.com) and typing “SAS” in the
search box. SAS Publishing has partnered with Google Book search so that you can search through their books and
have a limited preview of the book. For information on Google Book Search, visit that category at sasCommunity
(sascommunity.org/wiki/Google_Book_Search.)
Sample Code in Documentation. Check out the online sample code from SAS Institute and SAS Press books.
Select the LEARNING CENTER section in the right sidebar of the SAS Customer Support Center home page. Then
select Bookstore and Browse Resources in the left sidebar. At the bottom of that page, select SAS Press Series
Samples. This is the sample code that accompanies the SAS Press books.

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There are over 125 books listed on this page. To quickly find a topic, use the Web browser find command (ctrl+F.)

Education
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not
occur to him to pull rather than push. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

There are numerous educational courses and workshops available for you to learn more about SAS. To find SAS
training that meets your needs, ask yourself, “What do I need to learn? How do I learn best? Where is it convenient for
me to get the training? What can I spend on training?”
SAS training, offered by SAS Institute and many other vendors, is available in different formats and delivery methods.
Below are brief descriptions of some of these. Visit Training (click on Training in the left sidebar) at the SAS Customer
Support Center site (support.sas.com/training) for the most current information about training and courses offered by
the Institute. You may also want to subscribe to SAS Training Report (support.sas.com/training/news/), a monthly
electronic newsletter that is free and contains news about the latest on training and certification, special offers for
subscribers, programming tips, instructor profiles and sample code.
Instructor-led courses. SAS Institute offers excellent instructor-led courses in many cities, before and after SAS
Global Forum, on-site and via Live Web. About 200 course titles are offered. Courses include slide presentations, live
demonstrations, exercises, time for questions and the Course Notes publication. Live Web offers the convenience of
taking instructor-led courses in your own office or home. All you need is a computer, Web browser and telephone.
Exercises are done in a virtual lab where you connect to a SAS Institute machine running the latest version of the
software. Therefore, the SAS software does not need to be installed on your computer.
e-Learning. SAS e-Learning allows you to take SAS Institute professional training from your desktop at your own
pace and when it is most convenient for you. Self-paced e-Learning courses are affordable and there are some free
courses such as Getting Started with SAS and Getting Started with SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS(R) 9.2 Changes
and Enhancements for Base SAS(R), Session 1: New and Enhanced Procedures and Statements. The e-Learning
courses are available at the SAS Customer Support site by clicking on Training and Self-Paced E-Learning. The two
Getting Started courses are located under Free Tutorials. The SAS 9.2 free course is located under Find an e-Lecture
> SAS Programming. You will need to login in and add the course to your shopping cart. If you do not have a login
profile you can register at that time. When you checkout the e-Lecture will be available through a link.

Self-paced e-Learning courses are taken in conjunction with the SAS software and include interactive questions and
quizzes and guided exercises so that you can practice as you learn.

SAS Web Seminars. SAS experts talk in-depth about technical topics and SAS products in live Web classes and on-
demand Web seminars. Go to www.sas.com and click More events in the right sidebar, which will take you to
Webcasts. Here you can search for a webcast by industry, solution or technology. You can also find webcasts at SAS
Customer Support Center under COMMUNITY and Events.

SAS Learning Edition. SAS Learning Edition is an educational tool that provides a hands-on experience way to learn
SAS, particularly for students at educational institutions. The current version is valid through December 2011 and
includes Base SAS, SAS/STAT, SAS/GRAPH, SAS/QC, SAS/ETS and SAS Enterprise. Only the first 1,500
observations of any data set are viewable. It comes with an online tutorial, The Little SAS Book for Enterprise Guide

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4.1, online help, and a turnkey customized installation. Go to the SAS Learning Edition (under LEARNING CENTER in
the left side bar at SAS Customer Support Center) for information about this package and its cost.
SAS Certification Professional Program. SAS Institute has a global certification program. One way to prepare for
the certification exams is the SAS Certification: Base Programming and Advanced Programming self-paced e-Learning
courses that can be licensed from the Institute. For information, visit Certification under LEARNING CENTER. Click
on Exam Preparation in the left sidebar and select exam preparation options.
Getting Started with SAS Software. The drop-down menu of SAS System Help points to the Getting Started with
SAS Software tutorial, which has hands-on experience using SAS software. This is the same tutorial mentioned above
under e-Learning. Also the SAS Enterprise Guide has a tutorial available through the SAS Enterprise Guide drop-down
Help menu.
Teaching Resources. If you are a professor or teaching instructor, check out the SAS Teaching Resources
(www.sas.com/govedu/edu/programs/teach_resources.html). Also on this page is an excellent resource for anyone
interested in statistics to know about. It is SORSE – SAS On-Line Resources for Statistics Education. Click on it and
choose the topic Solve Execises and then Exercises with data and solutions. Choose a statistic in the left sidebar and
then click on Learn How in SAS to see the solution using the SAS Enterprise Guide.
Other Institutions’ Web Sites. Check out the SAS Learning Modules from UCLA Academic Technology Services
(www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/sas.) Courses on Programming Fundamentals, Producing Tables, Graphs, Reports, and Maps
at available at The National Institute of Health CIT site (support.cit.nih.gov/statsoft/training/classrm/courstmp.htm.)
Some SAS Help Videos (about 5 minute segments) by Dr. Ed Boone are available as part of his Stat course at Virginia
Commonwealth University (www.stat.vcu.edu/help/SAS/index.html.) Search the Web for other SAS training.
SAS Users Groups. Hands-on workshops and pre/post conference training are offered at the regional conferences
and at SAS Global Forum. Seminars on a variety of topics are offered for a fee before and after SAS Global Forum.
Local users groups usually offer training at their meetings.
Other Vendors. Other vendors offer online and instructor-led training on SAS. You may see them advertising in users
group newsletters, offering training at regional conferences, and staffing booths in the conference demo area.
Efficient Ways to Learn SAS. The SESUG 2003 paper Efficient Way to Learn SAS® with Virtually No Cost
(http://www.prochelp.com/costfree.pdf) provides a list of Web resources for learning SAS. Because It is an older
paper, some of the links no longer exist.

Documentation and SAS System Help

"Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift." — Albert Einstein

In SAS 9, SAS documentation and online help are combined into one resource called SAS Help and Documentation,
accessible from within a SAS session. It contains a complete description of each SAS procedure, along with examples.
It also contains complete descriptions and examples of the components of the SAS language, such as, functions,
formats, and the macro facility. It includes what’s new in the latest releases; information on your operating environment
and the windowing environment; numerous sample programs; and more. Only the documentation for the software
licensed by your site is installed, thus making it easier to find the information you need.
SAS Help and Documentation is accessed from within a SAS session by selecting the Help drop-down menu.
You may get this message 'Preparing index for first use' with a delay of
a few seconds when opening the Help window. To avoid this in the
same SAS session, minimize the Help window instead of closing it.
The Help drop-down menu in SAS also includes: Using This Window
(information about the currently selected window), Getting Started with
SAS Software (quick-start tutorial for new SAS programmer and
resource tutorial for experienced SAS programmer), Learning SAS
Programming (if you license SAS online training), SAS on the Web
(links to SAS Institute sites), and About SAS 9 (information about the
SAS 9 release on your system.)

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Contents Tab. After opening SAS Help and
Documentation, click on the Contents tab to see
the table of contents. When you get a new
release of SAS, browse the What's New section
for new features and enhancements.
Select the +/- sign next to each section to
expand/collapse the table of contents. To open or
close all sections, right mouse click in the panel
to bring up the pop-up menu. Expand any of the
sections of interest to become familiar with SAS
Help and Documentation. By becoming familiar
with the layout, it will be easier to find the
information when you are in a hurry.

Here we have expanded some sections to show the location of the documentation for the Base SAS procedures.

Here we have expanded the Learning to Use SAS section, to show the location of the SAS Sample Library.

To quickly go to the top or bottom of the page, shift and click near the top or bottom of the vertical scroll bar.
Favorites Tab. If you are on a help page to which you may want to return, click on the Favorites tab, and click the add
button at the bottom of the panel. The name listed may not be clear or concise. In that case, right mouse click on the
name and rename it. When you open Help again, you will find the favorite topics listed in alphabetical order by the new
names. Therefore, topics that you reference often could be named so that they appear at the top of the listing.

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To easily return to a favorite page, click on the Favorites tab and double click on the topic in the list of favorites that
you have added. Be generous in adding favorite topics. It is quick and easy to do. Besides, you can always remove
topics that you no longer want.
Index Tab. The comprehensive master index is located under the Index tab. If you want to display an index for a
specific keyword, type the keyword in the field. Being able to search the index for a specific keyword saves time.

Search Tab. Select the Search tab to perform text searching for a specified keyword. Enter the keyword in the find
field and click the List Topics button. Double-click one of the topics found or highlight a topic and click on the Display
button at the bottom. The keyword will be highlighted in the documentation displayed.

Context-sensitive Help. Another way to quickly get to the help documentation from the program editor window is to
use the context-sensitive help feature. Context-sensitive help is activated by pressing the Help key, usually F1, and it
displays the help documentation for the subject where your present cursor position is located. Here’s an example of
how to use it. Put your cursor on a PROC name in the program editor and press F1 to go directly to the help for that
procedure. For example, you are in the editor window and have typed PROC TABULATE and cannot remember the
syntax. Put your cursor on TABULATE and press the F1 (help) key. Up pops the help window for that procedure.
Help Command. On the command line, you can type the word help followed by a topic.
Resource Guide from your SAS session. To view a resource guide developed by SAS Institute, open your SAS
session. Select the Help drop-down menu and click on Getting Started with SAS Software. Next choose Experienced
SAS programmer (resource guide) as shown here.

Using This Window. Another item in the Help drop down menu is Using This Window. Click on it to find information
about your currently active window. This is helpful for learning about features of commonly used windows and how to
use a window that is unfamiliar to you, such as the Query window.

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SAS OnlineDoc at the SAS Web site. HTML-based SAS OnlineDoc for SAS 8.2 and SAS OnlineDoc for SAS 9.1.3
and the central documentation library for SAS 9.2 are available under Product Documentation under KNOWLEDGE
BASE at the SAS Customer Support Center (support.sas.com/documentation/). The pages for documentation for the
different SAS versions are laid out differently. Spend some time becoming familiar with the pages for the
documentation that you need. If you open any of
the printer-friendly PDF versions and need to
access the PDF again, you may want to save the
document to your computer. Some of the larger
PDFs may take a while to download. Use the PDF
version to print selected pages or entire books. Be
sure to print only the pages you need. Some of the
PDFs contain hundred of pages. In the Print dialog
box, fill in the range of pages. In the example on
the right, if you leave the default Print Range to
print all pages, you would be printing over 3 reams
of paper.
Sample Code in SAS Sample Library. You can access the SAS Sample Library from SAS Help in your windowing
environment. After accessing Help in Version 8, click on the Contents tab and then on Sample SAS Programs and
Applications. In Version 9, click on Help on the menu bar, then SAS Help and Documentation. Next click on the
Contents tab, Learning to Use SAS and then on Sample SAS Programs (see screenshots above under Contents tab.)
You can select, cut, and paste the code into the Editor Window. Usually any needed data are included with the code.
Sample Code in SAS Help for the Procedures. The documentation for each procedure in SAS Help and
Documentation include examples with the code and results. You can select, cut, and paste the example into the Editor
Window and submit it. You can compare your results with the Results listed with the example. The following is an
example of reviewing the results of a plot procedure example. Click on Listing Output after the program to see the
results. Click on the magnifying glass to the left of a program statement to see an explanation of the statement.

Resources at SAS Institute’s Web Site

“By means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousand of miles in a breathless
point of time ... The round globe is a vast brain, instinct with intelligence.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851

SAS Institute’s Web Site is for those who are interested in learning about the SAS products (www.sas.com) and for
those who are using SAS software (support.sas.com). As a user of SAS software, you will want to visit the SAS
Customer Support Center. Either go directly to support.sas.com or choose Support and Training at www.sas.com.

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Next, you will see the following page. You can see across the top of the homepage and in the left sidebar that the
sections are KNOWLEDGE BASE, SUPPORT, LEARNING CENTER, and COMMUNITY.

SAS Customer Support Center is an extensive Web site. Become familiar with what is available by visiting the
sections and also topics listed in the right sidebar and within the content of pages. Bookmark those pages that you will
want to visit often or easily find again.
The SAS Web site, re-organized October 2007, is easy to navigate.
In the upper right hand corner of any page, you will find the Search
dialog box. You can do a search on the Web site or limit it on a
specific sub-section as shown to the right.
Often we will do a Google search of the Internet to find the
information we want, even information we know is on the SAS Web
site. If you do a Google search and want to only search the SAS
site, then include site:sas.com as one of the search parameters. To
limit the search to the SAS Customer Support Center, then use
site:support.sas.com.
You may want to subscribe to the blog Key Happenings at
support.sas.com (blogs.sas.com/supportnews/) to learn about
updates to SAS online support and other interesting tidbits.

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KNOWLEDGE BASE section. You will want to become very familiar with the KNOWLEDGE BASE section because
of the vast amount of information available in this section. Previously in this paper, we have visited the Product
Documentation sub-section of the KNOWLEDGE BASE to learn about the documentation for the various versions of
the SAS software.
SAS Notes is a database of information on known problems, fixes, documentation errors and corrections, usage
issues and tips. Find it under the sub-section Samples & SAS Notes. Click on Expand all topics on the right of the
page to see all topics.

Next select a topic, such as Creating Reports. The following page will open. By default all types – Problem Note,
Sample, and Usage Note are listed. Notice the shaded box Filter Results By. If I want to only see SAS sample code, I
would filter by the type Sample.

If there are many samples under a topic, you can change the Results per page to 100 and use the browser find
command (ctrl+F) to find a specific term, such as “plot”. Another way is to add the search term to the search box in the
upper right corner.

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SAS Technical Papers provide helpful information on many topics. Click on Papers under the KNOWLEDGE BASE
section. You will find many gems here. For example, TS-664 A DATA Stepper’s Introduction to ODS shows examples
of using ODS in the DATA step. TS-722, entitled Marketing Research Methods is a large document consisting of
857 pages. You can browse the papers by topic and review the titles of all the documents. Also you can browse the
documents via the Numerical Index, such as finding TS-722. That link is at the bottom of the page.

.
Notice that on the right side of the page, you will find links to Conference Proceedings, SAS Presents, and White
Papers. White papers are articles that explain and promote the benefits of particular technologies and products. For
example, there is a white paper entitled The Power to Know You're Making a Difference about embracing insight
initiatives in education. You can find white papers by topic, industry and solution. Also you can go to A-Z Index and
use the browser find command (ctrl+F) to find a word on that page. In order to view many of the white papers, you
must register or login to your profile. If you do not already have a profile, there is a link to create one.
Be sure to explore the Focus Areas sub-section (known as SAS Communities before the Web site update.) It is a
collection of information (papers, sample code, tips, and FAQs) about a common area, such as Base SAS or Web
Technologies. Here’s where you will find information on new and experimental products and solutions. If you are
interested in ODS, the Output Delivery System, select ODS in the Base SAS focus area. Look for sample code in
Focus Areas. For example, there are ODS examples under the Base SAS focus area and Web-enabled data
visualization samples under Data Visualization focus area.
SUPPORT section. The SUPPORT section explains how to submit an online problem or question. If you have an
urgent problem, you will want to contact SAS Technical Support by phone. One of the sub-sections of SUPPORT is
How to submit a problem. By submitting a problem online, you will receive a reply by email and have a written record
of the solution. You need to know your site or customer number when you submit a problem. This site number is
displayed in the SAS log when you first start the SAS System. You can also check a problem status at the SUPPORT
section.
You probably know who the SAS expert at your company is and who is willing to answer questions and help with
problems. You can also find out who are the designated local SAS support personnel at your company by clicking on
Administrator Services under SUPPORT and then click on Find SAS Support Personnel At Your Site. You will be
emailed the information. If after checking various resources, you still need help to find the answer to your problem or
question, you can submit it to SAS Technical Support.
LEARNING CENTER section. In this paper, we have already visited the sub-sections Bookstore, Training and
Certification that are under LEARNING CENTER.
COMMUNITY section. Some sub-sections under COMMUNITY will be visited in the section Community of this paper.
Under the sub-section e-Newsletters of the COMMUNITY section, you can subscribe to SAS Institute's e-newsletters,
such as SAS Business Report and SAS Tech Report. The resulting emails have a few entries in the e-mail with links to
articles of interest on the SAS Web site. For industry-specific newsletters, click on the link at the bottom of the e-
Newsletters page.

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Other Web Sites
With so much information now online, it is exceptionally easy to simple dive in and drown. —Alfred Glossbrenner

In his book Information Anxiety, Richard Saul Wurman writes:

If Orwell were writing 1984 today, he would not say, “Destroy the information.” He would say, “Inundate people
with information, they’ll think they’re free. Don’t deny them. Give them more. Undigested information is no
information at all, but it creates the fiction that you have accessed it, even though you didn’t benefit from it.”
On the Web, you are inundated with so much information that it is indeed overwhelming. The Internet is growing so
rapidly that it is difficult to keep up with all the information and services. Therefore, it is useful to know where to look.
Other SAS Resource Sites. Other Web sites of interest to SAS programmers are those with collections of documents
about SAS, collections of SAS code, SAS tips and the various sites that demonstrate running SAS programs from the
Web. Some of these sites are supported by regional and special interest users groups and can be reached from the
SAS site Users Groups pages. Follow the link to a specific users group and see if there is a link to its Web site.
The Web site Internet and Web Resources for SAS Programmers and Statisticians (www.prochelp.com) gives an
extensive list of SAS related Web sites. The Web site is maintained by Wei Cheng. It is divided into categories, such
as Consulting, Personal SAS or Statistics Pages, Useful Resources, Statistics Resources, and Tutorials and Tips. Use
the table of contents to select a category.

UCLA site. The UCLA site (www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/sas/) lists resources of interest as shown here.

Statistical Sites. Besides links to Web pages that perform statistical calculations, the Interactive Statistical Pages
(www.statpages.net) also links to online statistics books, tutorials and related sites. The Electronic Statistics Textbook
(www.statsoft.com/textbook/stathome.html) site has training on statistical concepts and applications.
e-Newsletters. SAS Views (www.views-uk.demon.co.uk) is the newsletter of the Independent UK SAS User Group
and offer tips and techniques. Some other newsletters are listed under the category SASopedia at
SASCommunity.org.

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SAS on YouTube. Yes, there are videos about SAS on YouTube. Check it out by going to www.youtube.com and
doing a search on SAS software or just do a Web search including the term youtube. Just remember that there are
other meanings for the word “SAS”, such as Special Air Service.
Search the Web. The way to discover what is available on the Web is to use a search engine. Google™ is a favorite
search engine (www.google.com.) For example, when I get an error message in SAS that is unclear, I will copy it intact
and do a google search for the search term SAS and the error message enclosed in quotes. Often I am successful in
finding an answer.
In doing a Google search on the keywords “find data Internet”, we found journalist Robert Niles’ page Finding Data on
the Internet (www.robertniles.com/data.) It has links to a number of general interest sites for researchers and
journalists and a link to his page How to Use Math and Statistics. Niles’ simple explanations of basic concepts in
statistics might be helpful when you need to explain one of the concepts to someone else.
Google Tips. Google offers a variety of features, besides searching. You can use Google as a calculator, dictionary
and package tracker. For those who have never gone beyond a basic Google search, you can get help about these
features and search tips from the Google Help Center (http://www.google.com/support.)
We highly recommend visiting Nancy Blachman’s Web site (www.googleguide.com) and printing the excellent Quick
Reference: Google Advanced Operators (Cheat Sheet) (www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html.)
Visit her Web site for tutorials on various Google topics.
Google searches a number of non-HTML file types. The most common formats are PDF, PostScript, and Microsoft
Office formats. If the results show View as HTML, you can click on that link to see the file in an HTML format. This is
useful to quickly see the contents of the file without opening or needing the application. We found this useful with
PDFs, which can be slow to open. If you like what you see, you can always open the PDF.

Also, if you want to only find PDFs, you can type "filetype:pdf" as part of your search query. If you want your results not
to include any filetypes with pdf, type, use “-filetype:pdf”. Sometimes, if the original page is not available, the contents
still may be available through the View as HTML link or the Cached link listed in the search results.

When Google finds multiple results from the same site, it lists the most relevant first and indents the second result
below it. To access the remaining results from that site click on the More results from link.

Here are some sample queries to show you ways to make your Google search more productive and show you the
flexibility and power of Google.

Sample query Results - Google returns pages with …

SAS Enterprise Guide the words SAS and Enterprise and Guide
"SAS Enterprise Guide" the phrase SAS Enterprise Guide
sas-enterprise-guide the phrase SAS Enterprise Guide

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 SAS tabulate proc OR procedure
the words SAS and tabulate and either the word proc or
procedure
SAS enterprise -miner
the words SAS and Enterprise but not the word miner
pages in the pdf format for the phrase SAS Enterprise
"SAS Enterprise Guide" filetype:pdf Guide
SAS ~tips the word SAS and tips and its synonyms, such as help,
tutorial, techniques.
"SAS Enterprise Guide" pages at the SAS Customer Support Site containing the
site:support.sas.com phrase SAS Enterprise Guide
"SAS Enterprise Guide" site:sas.com pages at www.sas.com, support.sas.com, ftp.sas.com,
etc. containing the phrase SAS Enterprise Guide
sas-enterprise-guide statement +where the phrase SAS Enterprise Guide and the word
statement and the common word where
define: regression Web pages containing definitions of regression
define regression show a definition for the word regression
bphonebook: SAS Institute Cary NC show business phonebook listing for SAS Institute in Cary.

SAS Code. Many university, personal, and company Web sites also have examples of SAS code. sasCommunity.org
has the sub-category SAS code (sascommunity.org/wiki/Category:SAS_Code) available through Quick Links in the
main menu. It identifies pages that contain SAS code, tools and samples. For example, there are 8 articles with SAS
code for solving Sudoku puzzles.
SAS code can easily be found by googling “SAS code.” For example, when googling “SAS code Tabulate”, we found
numerous results. If you are not successful in your search, try other search terms.

Web Skills. Even though we spent a previous section on Google, it is not the only search engine. Try other search
engines like Yahoo! Search (www.yahoo.com), Ask.com, and Live Search (www.live.com.) Dogpile (www.dogpile.com)
is a metasearch engine. It searches multiple search engines and presents the combined results.
When searching, be careful of your time. The Web has a lot to offer. At the same time, it can be a time sponge. You
can spend hours reading discussion groups and doing searches. You can find an enormous amount of information of
which only a small portion is useful or you can find extremely beneficial information. Just remember to keep your goal
in mind and set a mental or actual alarm clock.
Use your critical thinking skills when finding information on the Web. Not all sources on the Web are equally valuable
or reliable. When visiting sites while researching this paper, we found resources that were out-of-date or biased. If you
want some pointers on how to evaluate the quality of information on the Internet, visit the Virtual Chase Web site
(www.virtualchase.com/quality/), whose purpose is to teach legal professionals how to do research. They list these
five criteria—scope of coverage, authority, objectivity, accuracy and timeliness. This is a fun site to visit—they list
hoaxes on the Internet that are covered in the news.

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Remember to bookmark sites of interest, so that you easily find them again. You can also drag an address to the Links
toolbar on your Web browser for sites that you visit frequently. Also you may want to set up a folder of SAS links in
your browser, such as:

Consider using a social bookmarking website, such as del.icio.us, to store your bookmarks on the Web. The
advantages are that you can get to your bookmarks from other computers, you can tag the entries with words that are
meaningful to you and you can choose to share any bookmark publicly. You can check out what other people are
bookmarking, There are a number of bookmarks for the tag SAS.
When searching the Web for a specific topic for work, you will want to stay focused. While searching for specific code,
you will probably find other useful code along the way. When googling “SAS code Tabulate” for a project, this code to
do the Font-Dump was found and was useful for another project.

However, because my focus was to find tabulate examples, I easily added the Web page to my del.icio.us bookmarks
to reference later. In this case, I used the tags sascode and todo and added a brief description in the notes section of
the bookmark.

Community
None of us is as smart as all of us. —Anonymous
sasCommunity. sasCommunity.org was
announced at SAS Global Forum 2007 and is a
Wiki-based Web 2.0 site, It is accessible for
reading, editing and adding SAS information. It is
a way for you to learn from others and also
contribute your SAS knowledge. The SAS Global
Users Group Executive Board designed, created,
owns, and manages sasCommunity.org as a
resource for all SAS users worldwide.
It’s free to create a sasCommunity.org account.
Once you have an account, you are a registered user. You do not need to be registered to browse the site. However,
as a registered user you can do much more. You can create your own home page, create blogs, post notices and job
openings, participate in forums, and add technical articles to the Sasopedia. It is an opportunity to share your SAS
expertise with others.
sasCommunity.org has information to help you get started. Here are a few tips. When you create your account, do not
use spaces or underscores (_) in your user name. After creating your account, you need to reply to an email sent to
you by sasCommunity.org to confirm the request. Set your preferences by selecting my preferences at the top of the
screen. Verify that Enable e-mail from other users is selected. This allows email to be sent to you from other users
through sasCommunity.org. Please note that your email address will not be revealed to others. To become familiar
with sasCommunity.org, browse the site and read some of the getting started articles. You can be on the forefront of
using sasCommunity.org and helping it evolve into an excellent resource for SAS users.
SAS Conferences. SAS Conferences provide numerous benefits, such as a place to talk with your peers, exchange
ideas, attend papers on topics of interest. At the conferences make sure you talk to SAS staff in the demo areas.

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Conferences also offer hands-on workshops and pre/post conference training. Go to the topics under Users Groups on
the right bar on the SAS Customer Support Center page to find out more about local, regional, international, and
special interest users groups and conferences.
Proceedings. The conference Proceedings is a compilation of the papers and posters given at the conference. If you
attend SAS Global Forum (previously called SAS Users Group International (SUGI)), you will get a CD-ROM version of
the Proceedings. The papers are stored in Adobe PDF (portable document format.)
The SUGI Proceedings, beginning
with SUGI 22, are located at the
SAS Web site. To get to the SUGI
Proceedings online, go to SAS
Customer Support Center, choose
COMMUNITY, User Groups, SAS
Global Forum Annual Conference,
Previous Conferences and then
Online Proceedings. Here you can
search for a topic or go directly to a
particular proceedings.

Examples in the Conference Proceedings. Some conference papers include snippets of code or complete
examples. Prior to SUGI 29, the papers in the conference Proceedings were in two columns. Adobe Acrobat reader
allows you to select and cut columns of text.
Regional and Special Interest Groups. Many of the other SAS conferences have their proceedings online. The
easiest way to find them is to use Lex Jansen's Web site (www.lexjansen.com). This site searches over 8600 SAS
papers. It has access to the SAS Global Forum/SUGI papers presented from 1996 to the present and papers from
PharmaSUG, NESUG, SESUG, PhUSE, WUSS, MWSUG, PNWSUG, SCSUG, and SAS CDISC-related papers
(Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium). You can also search the SAS-L archives from Lex Jansen’s site.
Visit the SAS Consultant Special Interest Group (www.sconsig.com) for tips, code and links to other sites.
User Forums at SAS Customer Support Center. The SAS Discussion Forums hosted by SAS Institute provide a
place for users to exchange with other SAS users technical information on SAS products and services. SAS
employees monitor the forums and offer helpful information when appropriate. The Forums should not be used in
place of SAS Technical Support. Some of the Forum categories are SAS Enterprise Guide, SAS and Clinical Trials
and ODS and Base Reporting. At the SAS Customer Support Center, click on the COMMUNITY section and select
User Discussion Forums.
SAS-L. SAS-L is the user-run electronic discussion group sponsored by the University of Georgia. It is devoted to the
®
discussion of SAS software and has been in existence since 1986. SAS-L is where we learned about UltraEdit , our
favorite text editor.
You can give and receive SAS answers on the SAS-L discussion group. Once you start reading SAS-L messages, you
will find that there are several SAS experts who consistently assist SAS users with their SAS questions.
There are thousands of people who read the SAS-L messages. Here are three ways to read the messages. You can
subscribe to SAS-L and receive the messages in your mailbox. (To subscribe send an e-mail message to the address
listserv@uga.cc.uga.edu with the message SUBSCRIBE SAS-L your name.) You can read the messages in the
newsgroup comp.soft-sas.sys through a newsreader client on your computer. Finally, you can read the newsgroup
through the Google Groups Web page.
An easy way to view the newsgroup is to use Google Groups from your browser. Go to www.google.com and click on
more on the top menu to open that drop-down menu and select Groups. You can also go directly to
groups.google.com. The SAS-L group can be found at groups.google.com/group/comp.soft-sys.sas.
Once you have the group
messages listed, bookmark the
page or put it on the Links toolbar
of your Web browser. With Internet
Explorer and other Web browsers,
you can drag the address in the
Address box to the Links toolbar.
Then shorten the text of the link by
right mouse clicking on the text next

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to the icon and renaming it “SAS-L”. Now you can quickly call up the SAS-L group by clicking on your newly created
SAS-L link.
Searching the SAS-L Archives. The SAS-L archives (www.listserv.uga.edu/archives/sas-l.html), a repository of
previously sent messages, is a good source of information to search for answers. You can search the archives at
Google. The messages are maintained back to the first message posted on comp.sys-soft.sas on July 20, 1993,
announcing the creation of the unmoderated
newsgroup comp.soft-sys.sas The SAS
statistics package.
You can search all groups or do an Advanced
Groups Search and limit the group to
comp.soft-sys.sas (or *sas) and fill in other
limits, such as message date. If you are already
at the group, you will see the dialog box Search
this group on the right side of the page. There
are over 96,000 topics in the newsgroup.
SAS Blogs and RSS feed. Thousands of blogs (short for Web log), or online journals, are being created weekly. Visit
the Blogger’s Corner at sasCommunity (www.sascommunity.org/wiki/Category:Bloggers_Corner) for a list of blogs of
interest to SAS users. You can also use blogsearch (www.google.com/blogsearch) to search for blogs. Many blogs are
not regularly maintained. A couple of blogs that we visit are The SAS Dummy written by Chris Hemedinger, a senior
software manager in SAS R&D and Data Steps by Stephen Philp. The latter is where I found the paper The Dangers
and Wonders of Statistics Using SAS by AnnMaria De Mars and posted on her blog. Also, check out Lifehacks
(www.lifehack.org), a popular blog on productivity. If you visit a blog regularly, you may want to subscribe to a news
feed. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) delivers news feeds to your browser. To learn more about RSS and blogs at
SAS Institute, check out RSS & Blogs under COMMUNITY at SAS Customer Support Center
(support.sas.com/community/rss/.)

Keep Learning
Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open—Thomas Dewer
Learn from Code Created in SAS Windows. There are a few windows in the Windowing environment that use point
and click to generate results. Some of these windows are Graph-N-Go and the Query window. From these windows
you can save the SAS code that generated the result. Then you can view and learn from the code or use it as a
starting point for further development. To find out how to save the code, review the help for the particular active
window by selecting Using this Window from the drop-down help menu.
Learn from Code Created in SAS Enterprise Guide. SAS Enterprise Guide is a Windows client application with a
point-and-click graphical interface for reporting, graphing and analysis. As you point-and-click, SAS code is generated
in the background. You can view and save the generated code.
Learn from Your Own and Co-workers’ Experience. Keep a log of your own SAS experience and SAS code. An
online log can contain links to papers and SAS code. Often your co-workers will be willing to explain how they solve
problems with SAS. Review code and standards at your company.
Learn by Participating on sasCommunity.org. Contribute to sasCommunity.org and tell other SAS users about it.
Learn by Participating in a Users Group. Get and share information by participating in a users group at the local,
regional and/or international level. The international and regional conferences are planned and organized by SAS
users, like you, who generously donate their time and talents. Volunteers are always needed and essential to the
continued success of the conferences. If you don't want to speak or give a poster, there are many other ways to share
your talents, time, and expertise at a conference.

Conclusion
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. — Albert Einstein
Knowing how and where to find the answer, not necessarily knowing the answer, is an important skill for a SAS
programmer to have.
There is a wealth of information about the SAS System ranging from hardcopy books to online discussion groups. This
paper is an overview of the resources available to help you find the answer. Spend some time to become familiar with
the many SAS resources. Then when you are pressed for time on a project, you will feel more confident in being able
to use SAS resources to find answers.

16
References
Hawthorne quote about the invention of the telegraph is from remarks prepared for delivery by Vice President Al Gore,
International Telecommunication Union, March 2, 1994.
Blachman, Nancy, Google Guide, Making Searching Even Easier, www.googleguide.com/pdf/googleguide.pdf, 2004.
Cheng, Wei (2001), “Internet and Web Resources for SAS Programmers and Statisticians”, Proceedings of the
Twenty-Six Annual SAS Users Group International Conference, Paper 239-26.
Howard, Neil (2005), “Hire Power”, SouthEast SAS Users Group (SESUG) Conference Proceedings, Paper
SER13_05.
Stojanovic, Mirjana (2003), “Efficient Way to Learn SAS® with Virtually No Cost”, SESUG 2003 Proceedings
Wurman, Richard Saul (1989), Information Anxiety, Doubleday Edition.

Contact Information
Ginger Carey Helen Carey
Carey Consulting Carey Consulting
808.235.4070 808.235.4070
ginger@hawaii.edu carey@hawaii.edu

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS
Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration.

Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

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