Industry Reports

The Thomson CenterWatch 2007 Survey of Investigative Sites in the U.S. finds that: sites have rated Kendle, Covance, Omnicare as Top CROs to work with.

Basics & Books to Read

Basics:

Clinical Trials Terminology for SAS Programmers

http://www.lexjansen.com/pharmasug/2004/tutorials/tu03.pdf

Pharmaceutical Programming: From CRFs to Tables, Listings and Graphs, a process overview with real world examples

http://www.lexjansen.com/pharmasug/2005/posters/po12.pdf

SAS ® PROGRAM EFFICIENCY FOR BEGINNERS

http://www.ats.ucla.edu/STAT/sas/library/nesug00/bt3005.pdf

SAS Books:

SAS Certification Prep Guide: Base Programming

SAS Programming in the Pharmaceutical Industry

The Little SAS Book

More:

Visit: "SaS9 Learn to Lead"

http://sas9.blogspot.com/

Preparing for SAS Base Certification?

1. The best way to prepare for certification is: To read the book: SAS Certification Prep Guide: Base Programming for SAS 9 . This book helps in understanding the basics of SAS Programming.
2. After mastering the book, one can try solving questions in this blog: http://sascert.blogspot.com/ (which is very useful). There are about 120 questions and it is worth reading.
3. For all who wd plan to take the exam: "Only practical programming make someone a better programmer".

SAS Certified Base Programmer Credential for SAS 9

2 hours duration
70 multiple-choice questions
Must answer 46 correctly to pass

SAS Programming I: Essentials

Course Contents

Getting Started with SAS

• overview of the SAS System
• introduction to SAS programs
• running SAS programs
• mastering fundamental concepts
• diagnosing and correcting syntax errors
• exploring the SAS environment (self-study)

Getting Familiar with SAS Data Sets

• explaining the concept of a SAS data library

Producing List Reports

• getting started with the PRINT procedure
• sequencing and grouping observations
• identifying observations (self-study)
• using special WHERE statement operators (self-study)

Enhancing Output

• customizing report appearance
• formatting data values
• creating HTML reports

Creating SAS Data Sets

• reading raw data files using column input and formatted input
• examining data errors
• assigning variable attributes
• changing variable attributes (self-study)
• reading Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (self-study)

Programming with the DATA Step

• reading SAS data sets and creating variables
• executing statements conditionally
• dropping and keeping variables (self-study)
• reading date fields from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (self-study)

Combining SAS Data Sets

• concatenating SAS data sets
• merging SAS data sets
• combining SAS data sets using additional features (self-study)

Producing Summary Reports

• introduction to summary reports
• generating basic summary reports
• using the REPORT procedure
• creating reports using the TABULATE procedure (self-study)

Introduction to Graphics using SAS/GRAPH Software (Self-Study)

• producing bar and pie charts
• enhancing output
• producing plots

Additional Resources:-

Using SAS Enterprise Guide

• creating the files needed for the course
• understanding functional areas in SAS Enterprise Guide
• naming a project
• working with existing code
• resizing windows in SAS Enterprise Guide
• modifying code
• executing SAS code
• viewing SAS Enterprise Guide output
• diagnosing and correcting syntax errors
• reating SAS programs
• accessing data sources with the LIBNAME statement
• renaming a code node in the Process Flow window
• submitting programs
• saving projects
• the Output Delivery System (ODS) and SAS Enterprise Guide
• copying SAS programs within a project

Introduction to Graphics Using SAS Enterprise Guide

• producing and modifying a vertical bar chart
• producing and modifying a pie chart
• producing a horizontal bar chart
• producing a two-dimensional plot

SAS Programming II: Manipulating Data with the DATA Step

Course Contents

Introduction

• review of SAS basics
• review of DATA step processing
• review of displaying SAS data sets
• working with existing SAS data sets

Controlling Input and Output

• outputting multiple observations
• writing to multiple SAS data sets
• selecting variables and observations
• writing to external files

Summarizing Data

• creating an accumulating total variable
• accumulating totals for a group of data

Reading and Writing Different Types of Data

• reading delimited raw data files
• controlling when a record loads
• reading hierarchical raw data files

Data Transformations

• manipulating character variables
• manipulating numeric variables
• manipulating numeric variables based on dates
• converting variable type

Processing Data Iteratively

• performing DO loop processing
• performing SAS array processing

Combining SAS Data Sets

• match-merging two or more SAS data sets
• performing simple joins using the SQL procedure (self-study)

Learning More

• identifying additional resources

For further details: http://support.sas.com/certify/index.html

For SAS Beginners: Self-Paced e-Learning

For Beginners, who would like to learn SAS BASE Programming, http://www.sas.com/: provides Self-Paced e-Learning Courses.

1. Open this page in Internet Explorer and click on "SUPPORT & TRAINING".
2. This hyperlink will take you to another page: http://support.sas.com/
3. In the left corner of the page, you can find LEARNING CENTER: Training which when clicked would expand to:

   Self-Paced e-Learning (click here to sign up)

4. Not registered yet? Sign up now.
5. Once this form is filled, the user can see Free Tutorials
   "TUTORIAL: Getting Started with SAS(R) Free:",=> Add to Cart.
6. Now, click onYour Cart Symbol on Top Right corner...
7. Then Checkout & go Back to the Self-paced e-Learning home page and start learning the courses.

This blog:

"welcome to SAS world": http://learningworld-baithi.blogspot.com/ is also an useful link. Few interesting topics include: SAS Clinical Questions & SAS Programming

SAS: Numeric conversion of variables containing special characters and alphabets

1. Sometimes, a programmer have to convert few lab results (variable: which are in character) to numeric form.
2. These variables may contain numbers(123456789.) as well as special characters(*/()*&%$,:'+-<>") and alphabets.
3. In such case, the following code does the numeric conversion of that variable:

if indexc(result,"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz*/()*&%$,:'+-<>") = 0 and result ne " " then do;

numericresult=input(result,best.);

end;