New Transitions

I have been working with an insurance company for almost two years, and I primarily worked with insurance claims to evaluate the effectiveness of care for our members and to discover patterns in care. Last week I accepted a new position with a physician clinical practice organization. The new position will provide experience on the other side of the health care industry, working with data from the doctor's office rather than the insurance company.

My wife, Kyra, is also looking for a new job. She's been having a rough time at her current child care center with the way it's being run. Last weekend she started submitting applications, and she's already had two interviews. She hopes to have a new job very soon, we hope with a daycare center where Luca can enroll and Kyra can seek state teaching certification. One day she would like to teach in an elementary school.

My son, Luca, has been growing rapidly. He's very talkative and he really seems to know what he wants. He enjoys going to school and visiting his friends. On the weekends, he's been taking swimming lessons and he loves the water! A bit too much actually--he really wants to swim on his own, but I'm sure he'd sink like a rock! Soon he will be two, and we hope to have a big birthday party for him.

So we're all undergoing changes. It may be a turbulent summer, but I hope we all end up a little older, a little wiser, and a little happier with these new transitions.

Open Last Table in SAS

I've been trying to find a way to open the last table created in SAS by using a keyboard shortcut. It's taken a while and many online searches to find it, but I finally figured out a good way to do it. I created a macro and set the macro to a keyboard shortcut. Here's the entire macro:

%macro OpenTable(table=&syslast) / des="Open a table";

dm "vt %sysfunc(compress(&table))" vt;

%mend OpenTable;

Set the macro to a keyboard shortcut by typing the following code into the keyboard shortcut editor window (F9):

gsubmit '%opentable;'

By default, the macro opens the last table created, and the argument can be modified for any table.

I'm so glad I found a way to do this! This should save a lot of time!

Update:

I added more to the macro code in case the table doesn't exist. Here's the new code:

%macro OpenTable(table=&syslast) / des="Open a table";

/* Check if table exists */
%if %sysfunc(exist(&table))=1 %then %do;

dm "vt %sysfunc(compress(&table))" vt;

%end;

/* Otherwise pop-up a message that it does not exist. */
%else %do;

dm 'postmessage "The specified table does not exist."';

%end;

%mend OpenTable;

Update Update:

I've developed a rather complex macro now that does the same thing:

OpenTable.sas

Electronic Task Management

I have a lot of things to do, and sometimes I have trouble remembering it all. At home, I use my computer to do remember and remind me of many tasks. At work, I use a combination of paper and the computer. Since documents from my PC or the network are not always available, it is still useful to retain a copy of certain tasks on paper. Nonetheless, I still use a few computer tools, at home and work, to help remember all of these tasks and make task management easier.

My wife and I planned our wedding using a number of Google's online office applications, including Docs, Calendar, and Notebook. We also used RememberTheMilk (RTM), an online task management application. Managing our tasks online provided the opportunity to travel and retain access to our tasks, as well as keep an eye on tasks while at work. Gmail and Microsoft Outlook also provide some useful tools for managing tasks.

For our wedding, my wife and I kept a few documents for the wedding in Google Docs, including the guest list and a service provider comparison spreadsheet. In Google Notebook, we had song lists, service providers and costs, a long to do list, and all sorts of ideas in a shared notebook. (Unfortunately, Notebook is not longer supported, so I transferred our notes to Google Docs and have been using that application since.) For specific projects at work (for example, HEDIS), I keep a task list in an electronic document, and I usually archive the tasks as I go forward, keeping newer items at the top.

My wife and I also used RememberTheMilk for managing tasks. I used this quite a bit and shared to-do items with my wife. We went back and forth between our to-do list in Notebook, which was a long-term list, and RTM, which was a short-term list. I still use RememberTheMilk for short- and moderate-term tasks, and Google Docs for long-term tasks. RTM, Google Calendar, and Outlook's task feature are useful for scheduling a task with a reminder and a specific due date. Calendar was also useful for sharing events with my wife as well as managing our to-do list and making appointments.

I associate many tasks with emails. Using Gmail at home and Microsoft Outlook at work, I flag specific emails with varying levels of priority. Gmail has a "lab" feature that enables various flags or "stars" that users can associate with anything. I have flags for immediate tasks, "important" tasks (due soon), "assigned" tasks (due later), items to read or review, and items to monitor. Gmail also has a Task list feature. I have not used this feature extensively, since I have been using RememberTheMilk for some time, and it appears that RTM has more features (e.g., scheduling tasks, associating a task with a URL).

I hope these tips and strategies are useful to someone out there. If you have any novel and efficient ways of managing tasks, feel free to share them in a comment!

Checking for Issues in SAS

I've been working on a macro program to check the SAS log for specific "issue" keywords, including "error", "warning", "invalid", and "uninitialized". Typically these are associated with issues in the program. I'm considering adding the following statements as well:

• "The query requires remerging summary statistics back with the original data"
• "Numeric values have been converted to character values"
• "Character values have been converted to numeric values"

The above statements may not always be associated with issues; however, there are better ways to write the program then to allow these statements to occur. For example, if the programmer wants to set a character variable to the text value of a numeric variable, it is better to use a put statement then to allow SAS to do it, as it may convert it incorrectly. Here's an example:

data _null_;
    today=today();
    call symput('today',today);
run;
%put NOTE: Today is &today;

The example sets today's date as a macro variable called today. However, the output is just a number. Depending on how the macro variable is used, this may be okay. Here's a better way to write it:

data _null_;
    today=today();
    call symput('today',compress(put(today,8.)));
run;
%put NOTE: The date value of today is &today;

Or, even simpler:

data _null_;
    today=today();
    call symputx('today',today);
run;
%put NOTE: The date value of today is &today;

Adding the "x" to the call symput statement will automatically set the numeric variable to character and remove spaces.

If the programmer actually intends to write out the date in a date format, then the following code will work. (Note that the date format can be whatever format desired. I like the YYMMDDN8 format since it sorts better.)

data _null_;
    today=today();
    call symput('today',put(today,yymmddn8.));
run;
%put NOTE: Today is &today;

The macro program I've written can identify these types of issues so they can be corrected. I've also recently discovered that other SAS users have created such log checking utilities, and they include more phrases that would indicate issues within various procedures that I do not use frequently. Once I have time to review these statements, I will include them in my program as well.

In addition to identifying these issues, I'm filtering out common issues that occur with the above keywords that are probably not associated with issues in the program. For example, a libname error from an autoexec program may not be an error for the program if it is not used. If it is used, there will be subsequent errors that would identify the issue.

This type of non-issue occurs at work frequently. We have a generic autoexec that runs when SAS is started, and it includes libnames that are located in directories I do not have the security rights to view. Therefore, every time I start SAS there are errors in the log. When I check the log for issues, I do not want these generic issues to appear.

How do you check for issues in a SAS program? Do you have a utility for doing so? What do you check for?

Goals for 2010

At work, upper management set corporate and division goals, and asked everyone to submit personal goals that align with the corporate and division goals. Here are my official goals:

• Complete all tasks as assigned for HEDIS 2011
• Submit HEDIS 2010 measures to NCQA
• Complete any post-HEDIS analyses
• Complete an internal leadership course
• Coordinate two projects to completion

In addition, I have these goals:

• Complete another AHIP course
• Complete another SAS course (advanced macros or programming 3)
• Share SAS tools (e.g., macros, autoexecs) with other users

I would really like to increase the communication between SAS users at work, so we can share processes, tips and tricks, macros, and programming methodologies. In part, this would enhance my skills as a SAS programmer, and it would also help make our SAS programs more standardized, increasing consistency, efficiency, and competitive edge.

What goals do you have for 2010?