SAS application

[chipy]

how is SAS different from MS Access or Oracle. from the research i've done it seems like SAS is a database w/ custom coding to extract meaningful info. but you can do that with Access and Oracle. is SAS any different?

chipy

 

[chipy]

does anyone here use SAS?

 

[DaveSimmons]

By SAS do you mean Statistical Analysis Software? Designed to do complex statistical analysis of data?

It's true that Access, SQL Server and Oracle have gradually gained some analysis tools in addition to their core features of sorting, selecting, filtering and reporting.

But they are databases with low analysis power vs. an analysis engine that can store its data.

Access can sort of work like a spreadsheet but it doesn't replace Excel. Acess can sort of work like a number-crunching program but it doesn't replace Matlab. The focus and feature sets are different.

No, I don't use SAS or SPSS

 

[chipy]

thanks for clearing that up DaveSimmons! yeah, i was wondering what the difference was... to an untrained eye (mind?) like mine, they all seem the same

chipy

 

[DaveSimmons]

If you want to dig deeper, try finding an online SAS guide / manual and look at the range of analysis functions it has, then compare it to what Access offers.

SAS will probably still offer dozens of types of analysis that Access lacks. But who knows, MS might have tried to catch up by now since SAS predates Access by at least a decade -- it came from mainframes down to PCs.

 

[Thyme]

I've never written in SAS, but I'm familiar with it. It's very powerful and different from Access.

Are you applying for a job that requires it?

 

[Drako357]

I use SAS a lot at work... It was created to mine data out of extremely large databases, or flat files... There really is no better program for pulling data if you are into data mining. You can't really compare Access to SAS. It was originally created to mine census data or agricultural data... Has the ability to query millions upon millions of records and give you results in a fraction of the time it would take other tools to do it. It also has a boat load of analysis tools and features to post to the web or query other databases such as Oracle, Access, SQL server etc...

 

[chipy]

hey Thyme

i'm not applying for a job (only because i don't know SAS ) - but that's where i got the idea. i was job hunting and saw some jobs that required SAS. previous to this, i hadn't heard much about it. my university has a SAS program in one of their labs... i think i'll go try it out if i can find a SAS book from my library.

thanks to all
chipy

 

[Thyme]

I was just wondering because the company I work for has people in Texas who use SAS.

 

[homercles337]

Be warned though, it is VERY pricey. R is an alternative (free under the GPL) to S, which was extended into S-Plus (IIRC or something). I good friend of mine in grad school did stats for a big health org and used SAS, R, etc to datamine. He would often be crunching upwards of 100GB at a time from datasets that were petabytes. But then this was a few years ago so i could be totally off since these discussions were often had over a large number of beers.

 

[chipy]

thanks for the input homercles337. GPL / open-source software is always a good alternative - especially consider how expensive commercial software can be...

Thyme, can i ask you what company you work for?

 

[Drako357]

Agreed, it is very pricey and a lot of the training has to be done thru the SAS institute, which is pricey as well.