Date:         Thu, 8 Feb 2001 10:55:05 -0700
Reply-To:     Jack Hamilton <JackHamilton@FIRSTHEALTH.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Jack Hamilton <JackHamilton@FIRSTHEALTH.COM>
Subject:      Re: JAVA replacing SAS?
Comments: To: TEDDEMC@shands.ufl.edu
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

I don't understand your distinction between adding new features (my words) and adding additional power, functions, and and better string support (your words).




--
JackHamilton@FirstHealth.com
Development Manager, Technical Group
METRICS Department, First Health
West Sacramento, California USA


>>> "Matthew Tedder" <TEDDEMC@shands.ufl.edu> 02/07/2001 7:53 PM >>>

The statement you made, "They are constantly adding features" bothers
me.  Oracle, for example, was clean and powerful technology in its
early days but they kept "adding features" rather than "improving it".
Not it's got more "features" than anyone could learn in a life-time.  The
same issue plagues SAS unnecessarilly.  I wish software development
firms would concentrate more on many existing features more flexible
and interoperable in place of simply adding features.  That will eventually
destroy them if they don't get a clue.

It's always easier to add features than to improve existing ones but the
payoff isn't usually as good.  Reworking existing code is really needed
for Base SAS, in my opinion.  There's tremendous amounts of
additional power that could be added into it.  Functions for example,
better string support, etc..etc...  It takes innovation.

--Matthew

>>> Jack Hamilton <JackHamilton@FIRSTHEALTH.COM> 02/07/01 05:51PM >>>
I'd bet on SAS.  They are constantly adding features (OK, not always the ones I'd chose), and they have very good tech support.  There are active users groups.  All those things are important.

DBMS/Copy (www.conceptual.com) supports much of base SAS and runs on Windows, Sun Solaris, SunOS4, HP/UX, IBM/AIX, DEC/Unix, SGI, and Linux, and is less expensive than SAS.  R (http://www.R-project.org/) does various statistical analyses, and is free.  I don't see either of those packages knocking SAS Institute out of business.



--
JackHamilton@FirstHealth.com
Development Manager, Technical Group
METRICS Department, First Health
West Sacramento, California USA


>>> "Meshkovsky, Paul" <PMeshkovsky@FLEETCC.COM> 02/07/2001 2:20 PM >>>
What language is SAS written in? Is it C ?, C++ ? or both? But If somebody
has enough resources to create similar language in JAVA and provide most of
the statistical functionality that SAS provides and Sell it not lease it.
Who do you think will win! SAS or OTHER. I bet on other. Especially if
somebody owns a small business.

Paul.

-----Original Message-----
From: David L. Cassell [mailto:Cassell.David@EPAMAIL.EPA.GOV]
Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2001 1:31 PM
To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: JAVA replacing SAS?


Matthew Tedder wrote [in part]:
> Where I work, we use SAS primarilly for data processing as where
> you might use it for statistics.  Actually, I use SPSS for data analysis
> and have never even explored SAS's capabilities for that.

SPSS is good too, but I prefer SAS.  Still, if you only do data processing,
you're not using a large portion of the facilities of SAS so there are
plenty
of alternatives out there.  Including some DBMS-only solutions and some
straight programming languages which are not 4GLs.

> What about RBase for statistics, how would say it compares with SAS?

If by 'statistics' you mean 'means and totals and an occasional standard
deviation',
then RBase would be fine.  It's a fast DBMS [I have no experience with it
on
really large databases though] with decent SQL and reporting facilities.
If by 'statistics' you mean anything other than mere descriptive statistics
and graphs, then no, RBase [and pretty much any DBMS] is not the way to go.
Use
a real stat package.  SPSS, SAS, S, R, S-Plus, GLIM, whatever works for
you.  Just
don't try to do real statistical analysis in a spreadsheet or database
package.
Or else your wife may make you sleep on the couch for a week.  :-)

David
--
David Cassell, OAO Corp.                           Cassell.David@epa.gov
Senior computing specialist
mathematical statistician