What's New

What's New in SAS Enterprise Guide 4.2

Overview

SAS Enterprise Guide 4.2 includes the following new features and enhancements:

For information about the new features and enhancements in SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3, see What's New in SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3.

The SAS Enterprise Guide user interface has been simplified to include a context-sensitive toolbar in the workspace that changes based on what is displayed in the workspace.
You can now recover a project if SAS Enterprise Guide closes unexpectedly.
You can perform conditional processing with new condition nodes.
Parameters are now referred to as prompts, and the user interface has been updated to include many new prompt types.

SAS Report is the default output format.
You can now export results in the SAS Report format to HTML.
When you export a file as a step in a project, you can choose to replace any previous output or save the output with a time and date history.
When you e-mail a file as a step in a project, you can specify the name of the attached file.
You can now send a file to the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office.

The Import Data task user interface has been improved and now has better default settings.
You can import Microsoft Excel data by using Microsoft Excel, if it is installed.
You can use SAS/ACCESS for PC File Formats, if it is installed.
You can now embed data as DATALINES, or you can use the traditional INFILE method.

You can change the relationship between filters directly on the Filter Data tab.
There is better detection of expressions that contain aggregations for use in computed columns.
The New Computed Column wizard has an improved user interface.
The interface to create a recoded column has been improved, and you can now specify replacement values based on a conditional expression.
The expression builder interface has been updated and provides better support for gathering data values.
You can now specify a title and footnote for your query output.
SQL Pass-Through statements are now validated when you are joining DBMS tables.

The OLAP Analyzer can now support multiple, independent views of a cube.
In addition to creating filters that are based on a ranking function or on a range of values, you can now filter by member caption and member property. You can also create filters that can be used by multiple queries.

The following macro variables are new:

_CLIENTPROJECTPATH specifies the full path and filename for the project. In previous releases, the _CLIENTPROJECTNAME variable contained this information. Now, the _CLIENTPROJECTNAME variable specifies the filename for the project.
_CLIENTTASKFILTER specifies the filter that is defined for the task. You can use this macro variable in the titles and footnotes of the task, so that the filter information is displayed in the title or footnote of your results.

When you open a task, the task uses the active data source as the input data source by default. Now, from the Data panel for the task or the Verify Data step of the wizard, you can modify the data source in the following ways:
- select a different data source
- create a filter
In the advanced tasks, you can now edit and view the properties of the task from the new Properties panel.
Task templates enable you to save your settings for a specific task to a template. You can then run that template with any input data source. After they have been created, these templates are available to use in SAS Enterprise Guide and the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office.

The following tasks have been enhanced:

The Bar Chart task now supports multiple chart variables within a single group variable. Two new bar types, Multiple Measures Vertical Groups and Multiple Measures Horizontal Groups, have been added.
In the Bar-Line Chart task, you can now create multiple line plots and specify the line statistics for each individual plot. You can also create multiple legends for the chart.
In the Correlations task, you can now use the Fisher options for Pearson or Spearman correlations.
The following tasks now support ODS statistical graphics. The tasks are listed by category.
- ANOVA: Linear Models, One-Way ANOVA, t Test
- Describe: Distribution Analysis, One-Way Frequencies, Summary Statistics
- Multivariate: Cluster Analysis, Correlations, Factor Analysis, Mixed Models, Principal Components
- Regression: Generalized Linear Models, Linear Regression, Logistic Regression
- Survival Analysis: Life Tables, Proportional Hazards
- Time Series: Create Time Series Data

The following tasks are new for this release:

Download Data Files to PC enables you to select one or more SAS data sets (*.sas7bdat) from one or more SAS servers and copy them to your local Microsoft Windows file system.
Filter and Sort enables you to select the variables to include when you open the data source in SAS Enterprise Guide, create a simple or advanced filter, and specify the sort order for the data.
List Report Wizard enables you to create detail or summary reports. A detail report contains one row for every observation selected for the report. A summary report consolidates data so that each row represents multiple observations.
Tile Chart enables you to create a tile chart. A tile chart is a rectangular tree map that enables you to view a large quantity of hierarchical data in a limited space. Each unique category combination is represented by a rectangular tile whose size and color are determined by response variables. These tiles are placed in a hierarchical arrangement.
Update Library Metadata enables you to run a report on table definitions in the metadata repository or to update these definitions.
Upload Data Files to Server enables you to select one or more SAS data sets (*.sas7bdat) from your local Microsoft Windows file system and copy them to a SAS server.

The following tasks are available in a maintenance release of SAS Enterprise Guide 4.2:

Forecast Studio Create Project enables you to create a new SAS Forecast Studio project. You can specify the forecasting variables, choose whether to forecast your data hierarchically, and specify the forecast horizon.
Forecast Studio Open Project enables you to open the selected series from an existing SAS Forecast Studio project and specify how to display the results.
Forecast Studio Override Project enables you to submit overrides for the forecast data in an existing SAS Forecast Studio project.