“It’s not you, it’s me.”Breaking Your SAS Co-dependence

Bob BurnhamTuck School of Business

robert.a.burnham@dartmouth.edu

Pulling in Both Directions

• SAS Integration Technologies – accessing SAS from VBA and .Net

• SAS Java Object – extending SAS with Java

Why?

In the words of Larry Wall…

• “But we know from experience that computer languages differ not so much in what they make possible, but in what they make easy.”

• SAS has been taking steps for a while:– SAS Integration Technologies were in SAS 8– SAS added hash objects and Perl regular

expressions in SAS 9– SAS made JavaObj production in SAS 9.2

SAS Integration Technologies

• Utilizes open communication protocols for both

Windows clients and Java clients to give developers

the ability to use SAS analytical power whether

they’re programming in Java, C++, C#,

VisualBasic.Net, Delphi or other languages.

SAS Information Technologies Site

Who wants to use SAS with Excel?

• There are 14,100 postings in Google’s archive of comp.soft-

sys.sas that reference Excel.

• There are 31 postings that reference the

SASWorkspaceManager control which allows you to run SAS

within Excel (about .22%).

• (For comparison, there are 32 references to Star Trek in the

same group of articles.)

Excel’s Macro Language

• Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is the built in macro language for Microsoft Office.

• VBA is one of many implementations of BASIC that evolved from the work of Profs. Kemeny and Kurtz at Dartmouth in 1964.

• If you know SAS, you will see a lot of BASIC that looks very familiar.

Example #1: If – Then

• SAS

if (x < 5) then do; put "Less than 5.";end;else do; put "More than 5.";end;

• VBA

If (x < 5) Then Debug.Print "Less than 5."Else Debug.Print "More than 5."End If

Example #2: Looping

• SAS

do x = 1 to 10; y = x * 2; put x y;end;

• VBA

For x = 1 To 10 y = x * 2 Debug.Print x; yNext

Learning VBA

• The Macro RecorderSub CopyRange()'' CopyRange Macro' Macro recorded 9/27/2003 ' Range("A2:B5").Select Selection.Copy Range("A7").Select ActiveSheet.PasteEnd Sub

• Books

“Hello SAS”: Integrated Object Model

• The Integrated Object Model is a series of COM objects that make it easy to use SAS from many different languages.

• The Component Object Model is Microsoft’s standard for getting software components to communicate with each other.

“Hello SAS”: Getting Started• In Excel, hit alt-F11 to access

Visual Basic.

• Click the Tools menu to view References.

• Click on:

SAS: Integrated Object Model

SASWorkspaceManager

“Hello SAS”: Workspace Manager

• The SASWorkspaceManager allows you to create a SAS Workspace.

• Each SAS Workspace has it’s own WORK library.

• You may have more than one SAS Workspace object at a time.

“Hello SAS”: Inserting a Module• Click on the Insert menu and

choose Module.

“Hello SAS”: Adding some code.Public Sub HelloSAS() Dim workManager As New SASWorkspaceManager.workspaceManager Dim sasWorkspace As SAS.workspace Dim xmlInfo$, code$ Set sasWorkspace = _ workManager.Workspaces.CreateWorkspaceByServer("", _ VisibilityNone, Nothing, "", "", xmlInfo$)

code$ = "data hello; msg='Hello from SAS!'; run;"

sasWorkspace.LanguageService.Submit code$ MsgBox sasWorkspace.LanguageService.FlushLog(10000)End Sub

code taken directly from SAS web sitecode taken directly from SAS web site

“Hello SAS”: Running It

Off on a Tangent: C#The code in C# is almost identical:

public SASConnection() { string xmlInfo;

sasWM = new SASWorkspaceManager.WorkspaceManager();

SASWorkspaceManager.Visibility visible = SASWorkspaceManager.Visibility.VisibilityNone;

sasWorkspace = (SAS.Workspace)sasWM.Workspaces.CreateWorkspaceByServer("",visible, null,"","",out xmlInfo);

langService = sasWorkspace.LanguageService; langService.Async = false;}

Submitting SAS Code• The easiest way to run code is to call the Workspace Manager’s Submit

and SubmitLines methods.

Public Sub SubmitCode(sasCode As String) Dim i%, sasText() As String sasText = Split(sasCode, vbCrLf) sasWorkspace.LanguageService.SubmitLines sasTextEnd Sub

Getting Output

• FlushLog(x) & FlushLogLines(x) return x characters from the SAS log.

• FlushList(x) & FlushListLines(x) return output from the SAS output window.

• The examples on the SAS website typically use something like FlushLog(100000).

Demo: SAS Connection

SAS JavaObj

• JavaObj, provides a mechanism for instantiating Java classes, and accessing fields and methods on the resultant objects.

• Imagine a Dog class (or object):– Fields: name, breed, age (nouns)– Methods: eat, walk, sleep, shed (verbs)

Declaring a JavaObj

declare javaobj j("java/lang/String”);• declare javaobj declares the Java Object• the object will be accessed through the variable j• the object will have a type of java.lang.String– java.lang is a package contains many of the core Java

objects including classes for many basic data types and mathematical operations.

– Java has a HUGE number of available objects that can be leveraged.

Using a JavaObj: Part I

data hello;length hello $20;if (_N_ = 1) then do;

declare javaobj j("java/lang/String", "hello world!");end;j.callStringMethod("toUpperCase", hello);run;

Using a JavaObj: Part II

Accessing JavaObject “Fields” (nouns):• j.setIntField("i", 100);• j.setDoubleField("d", 3.14159);• j.setStringField("s", "abc");Accessing JavaObject “Methods” (verbs):• j.callIntMethod("im", val);• j.callDoubleMethod("dm", val);• j.callStringMethod("sm", str);

SAS Types Java Types

• SAS has two data types: numeric and character

• Java has MANY data types.• SAS’ numeric type is equivalent to Java’s

double.• SAS’ character type is a Java String.

Dartmouth Name Directory

[Macintosh-10:~] bburnham% telnet dnd.dartmouth.edu 902Trying 129.170.208.9...Connected to dnd.dartmouth.edu.Escape character is '^]'.220 DND server here.lookup Bob Burnham, email101 1 1110 Robert.A.Burnham@tuck.dartmouth.edu200 Ok.

Querying the DND: Step #1

• Create a Java class, named DNDLookup, to connect to the DND and run a query.

• The DNDLookup class has one public method:public String lookup(String name)

Querying the DND: Step #2data email;

length name $40 email $60;if (_N_ = 1) then do;

declare JavaObj j ('DNDLookup');end;input name $40.;j.callStringMethod('lookup', name, email);datalines;

Bob BurnhamJean Luc Picard;

run;

Conclusions

• SAS has given programmers the tools to leverage the power of what other languages do well. The goal of this is to make our jobs easier.

• SAS Integration Technologies allow you to integrate SAS into applications written in many languages including VBA.

• JavaObj is a very promising tool for extending SAS and accessing the vast libraries of code written in Java.