SAS provides two Point-and-Click environments for performing analysis using many of the PROCedures. These interfaces make it unnecessary in many cases to write SAS code at all, though using them correctly requires a full understanding of how SAS stores and retrieves data (SAS Data Sets, Libraries, etc.).

The Analyst Application is available with Version 6.12 and higher. In the UNIX environment, it requires an X-Windowing interface. The Analyst Application provides a very user-friendly and intuitive (for those familiar with statistics) point-and-click environment for analysis and graphing of data that have been stored previously in a SAS data set. Analyst does not provide an interface for importing data or reading raw data from flat files. Data must be imported or read in by other methods before using the Analyst Application.

The Analyst Application is documented in a SAS publication that is listed at the end of this document. For more information, including a link to the SAS WWWeb site that discusses Analyst, visit:

http://www.usc.edu/its/doc/statistics/sas/faq/analystapp.shtml

To invoke the Analyst Application click on Solutions>Analysis>Analyst, or type analyst at any command line. After generating an analysis or graph using the Analyst Application, you can go to the Program Editor and click (or type) recall to see the program that SAS used (actual SAS code) to perform the analysis you requested. If you wish, you can then save the program to a file for later use.

Enterprise Guide is the newest point-and-click environment available for SAS. It performs analyses as well as data reading and data manipulation. (Note that this software is not available on the Macintosh.) Enterprise Guide is distributed with the ITS version of SAS for Windows, but must be installed separately. Once installed, it will appear in the Programs choice of the Windows Start menu, and if you choose, SAS will create an icon for your desktop. The online instructions and Help system in the Enterprise Guide make it self-explanatory, and it is fully documented in a SAS publication listed at the end of this document.

SAS/ASSIST is an older interface that is not quite as user-friendly as the Analyst Application or Enterprise Guide. It does have the ability to create SAS data sets from raw data, as well as do many of the analyses normally available from SAS PROCs, but with the other two more recent point-and-click choices available, it may never be necessary to use this older interface.