Databases Articles

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-25-2022

Whether you’re a small business owner or work for a global corporation, you deal with information every day. You receive information, you send it, you determine what’s relevant, and you make decisions, whether consciously or subconsciously, about what information to retain. That’s why records management — managing the flood of information you get every day — should be such an important part of your business strategy. This Cheat Sheet can serve as a quick reference to some of the main aspects of record management.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-25-2022

A data lake is an enterprise-scale home for analytical data from all corners of your company or governmental agency. No matter what your analytical data landscape looks like today, your organization will benefit from building a data lake.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

SAS Institute offers hundreds of SAS products, and sometimes it's difficult to decide which tool you should use for your work. Here is a partial list of SAS products you might encounter and who uses them for what purpose. As a SAS customer, you might use just one of these products or a few of them; if you're really lucky, you might use them all. SAS, or the SAS System The SAS System is the original SAS product that customers have used in one form or another for more than 30 years, on systems ranging from big mainframes to laptops. It's also known as Display Manager (the name of the windowing interface), or Base SAS, or just plain old SAS. The SAS System is primarily a tool for people comfortable with writing SAS programs. It contains the data processing and analytics engine that is at the core of most SAS products. SAS Enterprise Guide SAS Enterprise Guide provides a modern, easy-to-use interface to much of the power of SAS. SAS Enterprise Guide is used by SAS programmers, business analysts (who might or might not have programming skills), and statisticians. It’s a Microsoft Windows application that can connect to SAS; you can use it to drive the SAS analytics engine running on a mainframe, UNIX, or other remote machines as a server application. SAS Enterprise Guide is like a general store for SAS, where you can get a little bit of everything that SAS has to offer. SAS Data Integration Studio SAS Data Integration Studio is used to create and maintain data warehouses and data marts, which are specialized stores of data that have been prepared for effective reporting and analytics. Data experts, such as database administrators and IT specialists — people who support other folks who have to create reports — use SAS Data Integration Studio. Like SAS Enterprise Guide, this is a client application that runs on your desktop and provides an intuitive user interface, but it can connect to SAS and databases that run on machines all over your organization. SAS Enterprise Miner SAS Enterprise Miner is used for data mining, or investigating patterns in large amounts of data. Statisticians and professional modelers use SAS Enterprise Miner to segment data and create descriptive or predictive models. For example, a bank might use such a model to predict how likely you are to respond to a certain credit card offering. If your data profile is similar enough to others who have responded to similar offers, SAS Enterprise Miner would produce a model that indicates you're worth sending the offer to. Hello, Platinum card! SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office Some people spend most of their working days working with a Microsoft Office application such as Excel or PowerPoint. SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office lets you open SAS data sources and run SAS analyses without ever having to leave the comfy world of your spreadsheet or slideshow. SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office is used by business analysts who don't really need to know anything about SAS programming but need the answers that SAS can provide. SAS Web Report Studio All business intelligence software vendors must have a Web-based reporting product, and SAS Web Report Studio fits that bill. SAS Web Report Studio allows you to create and distribute reports to anyone who needs them, all without leaving your Web browser. SAS Forecast Studio SAS Forecast Studio analyzes time-based data and forecasting future trends and events. It's like a crystal ball, only better! SAS Forecast Studio is used by professional modelers or statisticians who understand concepts such as seasonality and intermittent demand models. However, no SAS programming is required! JMP JMP is a standalone, highly visual analytics product. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, or Linux-based computers. JMP is sometimes packaged with SAS and can work with other SAS products, but most often it's used by researchers, engineers, and quality-control experts who want advanced analytics without a big software footprint.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

A fundamental part of a successful records and information management program is identifying what records and information your company possesses and then applying appropriate retention periods. Records appraisal. There are different methods for appraising your records and information, including inventories, interviews, and questionnaires. Picking the right appraisal method for your organization is important. The appraisal allows you to identify what records and information the organization possesses and forms the basis for your company’s record retention schedule. Retention schedule. The retention schedule is typically the most referenced records management program document. It allows employees to determine how long they should keep their records and information. Records Management For Dummies addresses three distinct retention schedule methods: departmental, functional, and big bucket.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

The amount of electronic information has grown exponentially over the past decade. Local (C: Drives) and network drives are becoming digital graveyards. An effective records management program will provide you with the knowledge and tools you need to ensure that electronic files are properly managed. Folder structures and names. Creating an electronic folder structure that meets the needs of each department and ensuring that the folders within the structure are logically named are critical for accurate electronic filing, retrieval, and file maintenance (clean-up). File naming conventions. After you have created the proper electronic folder structure, it’s important to ensure that your files are also named in an appropriate manner. A rule of thumb for naming your files is that you should be able to determine the contents of a file without having to open it. This means avoiding cryptic names such as abbreviations, acronyms, and numbers. Maintenance. It is important to regularly review your folders and files to determine what is no longer needed. Microsoft Windows allows you to determine the last access and modification dates of a file. This is a good starting point in determining whether a file can be deleted. However, employees should always reference the organization’s record retention schedule before deleting any files in order to determine if the file is eligible for deletion.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Properly managing your records can help you reduce operating expense, enhance customer service and ensure your company is in compliance with laws and regulation. Reduce operating expense. Properly managing your records and information means that you only retain for a specific timeframe what you need for operational, legal, and compliance purposes and then appropriately dispose of it. This approach can eliminate the need to buy additional paper filing equipment and electronic storage. It can also reduce the cost of off-site record storage. Enhance customer service. A good records management strategy ensures that you don’t retain unneeded information. This reduces the amount of clutter you have to search through. Being able to quickly locate the right information allows you to better serve your customers. Legal and compliance. Implementing an effective records management program will allow you to identify records that are needed for legal and compliance purposes and ensure they are assigned the appropriate retention periods. This benefits organizations in the event of lawsuits, audits, and governmental inquiries.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

The tasks in SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office cover a wide range of SAS capabilities. These SAS tasks are easy-to-use interfaces that create SAS programs to do their work. The programs call on SAS procedures, where each procedure represents a specialized capability. And to make it even more interesting, SAS (the company) provides these procedures in product bundles, which must be separately licensed for customers to use them. With all of this at work, it can be tricky to keep track of which tasks use which procedures that need which SAS products. The following table lays it all out for you: all the tasks, how to find them in the menu, which procedures they use, and which SAS products are involved. Task and Menu Location SAS Procedures and SAS Products Import Data (Excel) File→Import Data DATA step; IMPORT Base SAS Open Information Map File→Open DATA step Base SAS Linear Models Tasks→ANOVA GLM SAS/STAT Mixed Models Tasks→ANOVA MIXED SAS/STAT Nonparametric One-Way ANOVA Tasks→ANOVA NPAR1WAY SAS/STAT One-Way ANOVA Tasks→ANOVA ANOVA; GPLOT SAS/STAT; SAS/GRAPH t Test Tasks→ANOVA TTEST SAS/STAT CDF Plots Tasks-- >Capability CAPABILITY SAS/QC Histograms Tasks-- >Capability CAPABILITY SAS/QC P-P Plots Tasks-- >Capability CAPABILITY SAS/QC Probability Plots Tasks→Capability CAPABILITY SAS/QC Q-Q Plots Tasks-- >Capability CAPABILITY SAS/QC Box Chart Tasks→Control Charts SHEWHART SAS/QC c Chart Tasks→Control Charts SHEWHART SAS/QC Individual Measurements Chart Tasks→Control Charts SHEWHART SAS/QC Mean and Range Chart Tasks→Control Charts SHEWHART SAS/QC Mean and Standard Deviation Chart Tasks→Control Charts SHEWHART SAS/QC np Chart Tasks→Control Charts SHEWHART SAS/QC p Chart Tasks→Control Charts SHEWHART SAS/QC u Chart Tasks→Control Charts SHEWHART SAS/QC Append Table Tasks→Data SQL Base SAS Compare Data Tasks→Data COMPARE Base SAS Create Format Tasks→Data FORMAT Base SAS Data Set Attributes Tasks→Data DATASETS Base SAS Delete Data Sets and Formats Tasks→Data DELETE Base SAS Download Data Files to PC Tasks→Data SQL Base SAS Filter and Sort Tasks→Data SQL Base SAS Query Builder Tasks→Data SQL Base SAS Random Sample Tasks→Data SURVEYSELECT SAS/STAT Rank Tasks→Data RANK Base SAS Sort Data Tasks→Data SORT Base SAS Split Columns Tasks→Data TRANSPOSE Base SAS Stack Columns Tasks→Data TRANSPOSE Base SAS Standardize Data Tasks→Data STANDARD Base SAS Table Analysis Tasks→Data FREQ Base SAS Transpose Tasks→Data TRANSPOSE Base SAS Upload Data to SAS Server Tasks→Data SQL Base SAS Import from SPSS Tasks→Data IMPORT SAS/ACCESS Interface to PC File Formats Import from JMP Tasks→Data IMPORT SAS/ACCESS Interface to PC File Formats Import from Stata Tasks→Data IMPORT SAS/ACCESS Interface to PC File Formats Characterize Data Wizard Tasks→Describe CONTENTS; UNIVARIATE; FREQ SAS/STAT Distribution Analysis Tasks→Describe UNIVARIATE SAS/STAT List Data Tasks→Describe PRINT Base SAS List Report Tasks→Describe REPORT Base SAS One-Way Frequencies Tasks→Describe FREQ Base SAS Summary Statistics Tasks→Describe MEANS Base SAS Summary Tables Tasks→Describe TABULATE Base SAS Area Plot Tasks→Graph GPLOT SAS/GRAPH Bar Chart Tasks→Graph GCHART SAS/GRAPH Bar-Line Chart Tasks→Graph GBARLINE SAS/GRAPH Box Plot Tasks→Graph GPLOT SAS/GRAPH Bubble Plot Tasks→Graph GPLOT SAS/GRAPH Contour Plot Tasks→Graph GCONTOUR SAS/GRAPH Create Map Feature Table Tasks→Graph GPROJECT SAS/GRAPH Donut Chart Tasks→Graph GCHART SAS/GRAPH Line Plot Tasks→Graph GPLOT SAS/GRAPH Map Graph Tasks→Graph GMAP SAS/GRAPH Pie Chart Tasks→Graph GCHART SAS/GRAPH Radar Chart Tasks→Graph GRADAR SAS/GRAPH Scatter Plot Tasks→Graph GPLOT; G3D SAS/GRAPH Surface Plot Tasks→Graph G3D SAS/GRAPH Tile Chart Tasks→Graph GTILE SAS/GRAPH Model Scoring Tasks→Model Scoring NONE SAS Enterprise Miner Canonical Correlation Tasks→ Multivariate CANCORR SAS/STAT Cluster Analysis Tasks→ Multivariate CLUSTER, TREE, FASTCLUS SAS/STAT Correlations Tasks→ Multivariate CORR Base SAS Discriminant Analysis Tasks→ Multivariate DISCRIM SAS/STAT Factor Analysis Tasks→ Multivariate FACTOR SAS/STAT Principal Components Tasks→Multivariate PRINCOMP SAS/STAT Pareto Chart Tasks→Pareto PARETO SAS/QC Generalized Linear Models Tasks→ Regression GENMOD SAS/STAT Linear Regression Tasks→ Regression REG SAS/STAT Logistic Regression Tasks→ Regression LOGISTIC SAS/STAT Nonlinear Regression Tasks→ Regression NLIN SAS/STAT Life Tables Tasks→ Survival Analysis LIFETEST SAS/ETS Proportional Hazards Tasks→ Survival Analysis PHREG SAS/ETS ARIMA Modeling and Forecasting Tasks→ Time Series ARIMA SAS/ETS Basic Forecasting Tasks→ Time Series FORECAST SAS/ETS Create Time Series Data Tasks→ Time Series TIMESERIES SAS/ETS Forecast Studio Create Project Wizard Tasks→ Time Series Forecast Studio SAS Forecast Server Forecast Studio Open Project Wizard Tasks→Time Series Forecast Studio SAS Forecast Server Forecast Studio Override Wizard Tasks→Time Series Forecast Studio SAS Forecast Server Prepare Time Series Data Tasks→Time Series EXPAND SAS/ETS Regression Analysis of Panel Data Tasks→Time Series TSCSREG SAS/ETS Regression Analysis with Autoregressive Errors Tasks→Time Series AUTOREG SAS/ETS Update Library Metadata Tools METALIB Base SAS Assign Project Library Tools LIBNAME Base SAS