1. “It’s not you, it’s me.” Breaking Your SAS Co-dependence
Bob Burnham
Tuck School of Business

2. Pulling in Both Directions
SAS Integration Technologies – accessing SAS from VBA and .Net
SAS Java Object – extending SAS with Java

3. Why?

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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.)

7. 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.

8. Example #1: If – Then SAS VBA if (x < 5) then do;
put "Less than 5.";
end;
else do;
put "More than 5.";
VBA
If (x < 5) Then
Debug.Print "Less than 5."
Else
Debug.Print "More than 5."
End If

9. Example #2: Looping SAS VBA do x = 1 to 10; y = x * 2; put x y; end;
For x = 1 To 10
y = x * 2
Debug.Print x; y
Next

10. Learning VBA Books The Macro Recorder Sub CopyRange() '
' CopyRange Macro
' Macro recorded 9/27/2003
Range("A2:B5").Select
Selection.Copy
Range("A7").Select
ActiveSheet.Paste
End Sub
Books

11. “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.

12. “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

13. “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.

14. “Hello SAS”: Inserting a Module
Click on the Insert menu and choose Module.

15. “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 site

16. “Hello SAS”: Running It

17. 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; }

18. 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 sasText
End Sub

19. 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).

20. Demo: SAS Connection

21. 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)

22. declare javaobj j("java/lang/String”);
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.

23. 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;

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

25. 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.

26. Dartmouth Name Directory
[Macintosh-10:~] bburnham% telnet dnd.dartmouth.edu 902 Trying Connected to dnd.dartmouth.edu. Escape character is '^]'. 220 DND server here. lookup Bob Burnham, Ok.

27. 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)

28. Querying the DND: Step #2
data ; length name $40 $60; if (_N_ = 1) then do; declare JavaObj j ('DNDLookup'); end; input name $40.; j.callStringMethod('lookup', name, ); datalines; Bob Burnham Jean Luc Picard ; run;

29. 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.