Michael Raithel Featured at Michigan SAS Users Group Meeting

Michael Raithel, a Westat Senior Systems Analyst, will be the featured speaker at the Michigan SAS Users Group meeting on Monday, October 31, 2022, from 1:30 to 4:00 pm. Mr. Raithel is the author of 5 books on SAS software, 25+ SAS technical papers, and over 200 SAS blog posts. He is an internationally recognized expert on the use of SAS in mainframe, Linux, and Windows environments.

Mr. Raithel will be presenting 3 SAS technical papers:

The SAS® Data Set Characterization Utility. This utility generates a single report file that contains the best of both the CONTENTS and the MEANS procedures. SAS programmers can use this utility to determine both the composition and the characteristics of a new SAS data set from a single amalgamated report. This paper presents the details of the SAS Data Characterization Utility and provides information on how SAS programmers can begin using it right away.

Using SAS to Download Files from Amazon Web Services S3. This presentation starts with an overview of Cloud Computing services and the top cloud providers. Next, it discusses AWS S3 and how SAS’s PROC S3 can be used to process objects in S3.  Then, it details a SAS macro program that was written to access a given S3 bucket and download a set of objects whose names were specified in a flat file. The program can also be used as a jumping-off point for writing programs that perform other functions on objects stored in S3 buckets.

Using the SAS HPBIN Procedure to Create Format Value Ranges for Numeric Variables. This paper introduces the Continuous Variable Format Start and End Values Creator program, which contains a macro that uses the HPBIN Procedure to create suggested SAS format Start/End values. Users can specify either of 2 main binning techniques and the macro produces a spreadsheet of computed value ranges. SAS programmers can copy the macro program from Appendix A and begin using it right away to define their own numeric formats