SAS FAQ

Last update(s): Thu Oct 13 15:29:24 2005     Fri Oct 14 11:30:26 2005     Thu Mar 23 14:06:11 2017               

Table of contents

1. What is SAS?
2. What books are available for SAS?
3. What documentation is available online for SAS?
4. What version of SAS do we have?
5. I tried to start SAS, but it refused because of too many concurrent users. What can I do?
6. I'm working on machine X. Why does it not have SAS?
7. Is there a local mailing list for questions about SAS?

Questions and answers

1.   What is SAS?

   SAS originally was an acronym for Statistical Analysis System. It was developed in the 1960s on IBM mainframes, and in the 1980s, made its way to the Unix world. It has a near monopoly in its field, and is now produced by a large privately held corporation, The SAS Institute, Inc. with headquarters in Cary, NC, USA (just outside the Raleigh/Durham twin cities).

2.   What books are available for SAS?

   Nearly 400 of them: see the extensive sas bibliography.

3.   What documentation is available online for SAS?

   Aside from three system-administration manuals, no SAS documentation is available in PDF form.

   The only generally accessible online documentation is therefore the help system inside the SAS GUI.

   Instructors in statistics courses where SAS is used will normally present brief introductory tutorials for their students, and may also prepare additional printed and/or online documentation to support those tutorials.

4.   What version of SAS do we have?

   Our current version is 9.10:

   % which sas
   /usr/local/bin/sas
   
   % file /usr/local/bin/sas
   /usr/local/bin/sas: symbolic link to `sas910'
   

   SAS licenses expire annually, and the vendor does not provide licenses for older releases, so we rarely have even two versions available.

   SAS is available only in a GUI version; the text-only version was dropped with SAS version 8.

5.   I tried to start SAS, but it refused because of too many concurrent users. What can I do?

   Wait a half hour or so, and then retry. If the problem persists, ask systems staff for help. The number of SAS licenses that we purchase has normally been sufficient.

6.   I'm working on machine X. Why does it not have SAS?

   The SAS vendor supports only a few of the architectures that we have, and each platform costs additional license fees, so we license it only for our major platform, Sun Solaris SPARC.

7.   Is there a local mailing list for questions about SAS?

   No, there is not, but one can easily be created if there is sufficient user demand. In the meantime, students who use SAS in statistics courses should direct their questions to their instructors.