1 Enterprise Guide®:: Tips for Programmers

Enterprise Guide is a Microsoft Windows client application that provides a guided mechanism to exploit the power of SAS. Enterprise Guide, also known as EG, integrates an array of SAS analytics into a friendly interface that allows business analysts to produce reports they need. Though SAS marketing has emphasized this accessibility to users who are not programmers, Enterprise Guide also provides an improved work environment for programmers. That is the focus of this paper, which introduces SAS Enterprise Guide to programmers. It describes and explains features that make Enterprise Guide an attractive alternative to the conventional Windows interface for programming, whether using SAS on a PC or on a server. The primary objective is to motivate SAS programmers not yet using Enterprise Guide to give it a try. There are also several tips that programmers with some Enterprise Guide experience could find useful. GETTING STARTED On the one hand, Enterprise Guide is a graphical interface that combines the power of SAS with an easy to use point-and-click interface and a variety of analytical tools that can be used out-of-the-box. This is how SAS has marketed it: a GUI for analysts. But that is not the only group of users for whom Enterprise Guide has something to offer. Enterprise Guide is also an environment for you, the SAS programmer, an intuitive and efficient way to structure and organize your projects