I will only address one question since it is in the area I normally comment on:

"Customizability, External Programability. AUTOMATION!!! (Preferably from VB.Net or C#.Net -yeah, I'm tossing VB6 into the history bin!-)"

SAS does not have an object model for its language or its procedures. That said, you can read in a SAS dataset using OleDb easily with .NET. SAS is not extensible as I think you mean it here. Nonetheless, get the data into .NET and then go to town.

SAS code can be executed directly against a SAS server using base SAS if the executing program resides on the same server or using Integration Technologies if the SAS Server resides on a remote server. There is plenty of sample code to show you how to do this if you decide to pursue SAS.

Alan

Alan Churchill Savian "Bridging SAS and Microsoft Technologies" www.savian.net

-----Original Message----- From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Neila Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2006 1:37 PM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: To SAS or not To SAS (or whatever else)!!,

Hi all, This message is directed primarily to individuals in these groups who have long experience using both SPSS and SAS (or any other statistically oriented/data intensive analytic tools) with a heavy data volume and frequent reporting requirements. I am pretty open to any and all suggestions.

In any normal context I wouldn't be caught dead with a SAS manual, and my obit will probably read, "We had to pull the SPSS manual from his cold dead hands, and needed to break some fingers to boot."

BUT, I recently accepted a position where part of my responsibilities will involve the selection of off the shelf data base tools, analytical software, programming tools and use them to build rather large scale solutions.

Questions I need to answer to management:

Relative efficiency and ease of data access via a Database (ODBC connection). -We will be building a fairly large data base containing both contemporaneous and historical data. What I mean by fairly large most people would consider unfathomly HUGE. Multivariate Data feeds every ten minutes over a year. Often there will be multiple years from multiple sites.

Ease of use and training/learning curve for new users (I am a seasoned SPSS professional with 20 years of experience with SPSS, I used SAS in Graduate school, but it seemed like having a root canal without a local).

Cost of licensing.

Flexibility of Output (Is SAS still text based output?, what do other statistical/reporting software solutions generate).

Graphical capability (mostly sequence charts, histograms, bar charts) .

Output Exports (Word, Excel)?

Customizability, External Programability. AUTOMATION!!! (Preferably from VB.Net or C#.Net -yeah, I'm tossing VB6 into the history bin!-)

Quality and ease of use/customizabilty of the User Interface.

Data Export capability/flexibility

The analytical/statistical reporting side is not terribly complex but the data volume will be immense and multiple person's will be using the data at any given moment. I hope this is clear wrt our requirements.

BTW, I read the Comparisons document produced by Michael Mitchell at UCLA and have even posted my own comments on one of the SPSS lists (possibly this one *WHEN IS SPSS inc going to respond???*). His report might be useful to university students/professors, but fails to address the needs of people trying to make decisions/recommendations in the context I currently find myself, so please DO NOT SUGGEST I use that information as a guide (too much of it is simply incorrect -read my post for some examples!)

Thanks, Neila Feel free to email me directly, but I believe it will be useful to have this discussion in the public forum