How to Become a Top SAS Programmer

Would you like to be a top SAS programmer? Would you like to be the person that other SAS programmers turn to for solutions to programming problems? If so, then How to Become a Top SAS Programmer, written by Michael Raithel is the book for you. This self-help book provides invaluable strategies for enhancing your SAS programming skills and introduces you to a wide variety of SAS resources that are readily available to you. Inside this book, you will learn: what makes a top SAS programmer fundamentals that every top SAS programmer should master ideas for advancing your SAS career within your organization where to find SAS documentation to learn new programming techniques how to participate in local and regional SAS user groups and SAS Global Forum how to make SAS training and certification work for you how to take part in SAS virtual communities to learn, contribute, and become well-known â ]and much more Want to increase your SAS acumen, solidify the use of SAS in your organization, be a greater benefit to your organization as a SAS programmer, contribute to the world-wide SAS community, and enjoy good career growth? Michaelâ (TM)s book will help the novice SAS programmer or a seasoned professional to do all that and more. Start reading it now and become the top SAS programmer in your organization who everyone goes to for insight and guidance into the many aspects of the SAS world! This book is part of the SAS Press program.

About the Author :
Michael A. Raithel is a senior systems analyst for Westat, an employee-owned contract research organization in the Washington, DC, area. He has worked with Information Systems in the commercial and government sectors since 1980. An internationally recognized expert in the use of SAS software in mainframe and UNIX environments, Michael is the author of more than 25 SAS technical papers and is a popular lecturer at SAS Global Forum and at regional SAS conferences. Michael has been a section chair at SUGI, SESUG, and NESUG, and he co-chaired NESUG in 1995. He has been a keynote speaker at WUSS, SCSUG, PharmaSUG, and a Featured Lunchtime Speaker at SAS Global Forum. Michael has taught SAS classes at SUGI, SAS Global Forum, and at American University in Washington, DC. He has written three books for SAS Press, with another in the works, How to Become a Top SAS Programmer. A copy of the first edition of Tuning SAS Applications in the MVS Environment resides in the Smithsonian Institution of American History's Permanent Research Collection of Information Technology.

Review :
You may think there is "nothing new under the sun" in the publications world with regard to helping programmers become a more valued member of their organization. Take a look at Michael Raithel's new book, How to Become a Top SAS Programmer, to see that this book is truly something new and unique. It fills a void for the SAS user community for sure. Unlike other books that teach programming, graphics, statistics, etc., this is a book that gives you solid, practical advice on how you can be a better programmer and, even more importantly, how to become a recognized guru in your organization. This idea-packed book provides you with actionable suggestions on how to advance your programming career, whether you are a beginning programmer or a programmer with 20 years of experience. Raithel makes suggestions such as holding code reviews and developing an in-house SAS user group that will not only benefit the individual, but the company as a whole. In this book, you will find links to hundreds of resources such as listservs, blogs, and SASCommunity.org that will enhance your professional career. Indeed, this book is truly "something new under the sun." -- Ron Cody "Fall, 2013" "How to Become a Top SAS Programmer is the title of Michael Raithel's book, but, in addition to providing an in-depth view of how to be as good a SAS programmer as he already is, Michael is ably demonstrating how good an author he is too. By reading this book to the end, you will have been given a workable plan to turn you into a Top SAS Programmer. However, you also will have been entertained by Michael's writing style, so you won't realize that, behind all of his enthusiasm, he has actually been lecturing you on how to make yourself more productive and your job more enjoyable." -- Philip R. Holland, Consultant and Author "Holland Numerics Ltd" "I think Renu Gehring's SAS Business Intelligence for the Health Care Industry: Practical Applications is a standout technical work that rewards the reader with the fruits of the author's exhaustive exploration of the capabilities of the SAS business intelligence tools. One feels in reading this like you're profiting from many hours spent discovering the limits of what the array of SAS BI tools can do. The book does an excellent job of making the reader aware of the extensive library of tools available: SAS Stored Processes, SAS Enterprise Guide, SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office, SAS Web Report Studio, dashboards, SAS OLAP Cube Studio, SAS Information Map Studio; it's all here. Gehring introduces these tools and then develops the healthcare applications for each. The data used in the applications is similar to data healthcare that analysts actually work with, and I think even veteran BI developers will find some gems here. For example, embedding a link to a stored process inside stored process output, and making what is usually static results dynamic, are especially creative techniques. "Another strength of the book concerns the variety of applications that are developed. Gehring emphasizes how different parts of the organization can benefit from the implementation of SAS BI. The finance department can use Excel to run stored processes to create revenue reports. Clinicians in medical management can use the web reports and information maps that analysts have developed to create patient profiles and improve patient care." -- Clif Hindmarsh "Healthcare Analyst"