While reading Kevin Smith's new book, I lost track of the number of times I said, 'Wow, that's cool!' It has good coverage of all things ODS, such as using CSS rather than an ODS style template, dealing with colors and backgrounds, enhancing PDF documents, and a slew of tips for getting SAS output into Microsoft Excel. But, it also covers things that are related to ODS, but seem more general (for example, inserting blank lines in a PROC PRINT, merging cells in PROC TABULATE, and spanning rows in PROC REPORT).

The book is a nice introduction to some new or underused capabilities, like ODSTABLE, ODSTEXT, ODSLIST, and the Report Writing Interface. It's a great way to get a sense of all that SAS can do to make your reports look better. Every short section is just enough to pique your interest and point you in the right direction. As with his previous book, PROC TEMPLATE Made Easy, Smith has taken a subject that many find daunting and presented it in a simple and straightforward manner. Again, great job!

Pete Lund
Looking Glass Analyst

I just finished reading Kevin Smith's excellent book on various ODS techniques. Much to my chagrin, his book has illuminated quite a few areas where I have fallen behind in my knowledge of the ODS system. Smith does a very good job in describing the basics, as well as delving into more esoteric areas (such as Javascript inclusion in HTML outputs and techniques for manipulating ODS documents). This book will be a benefit to both the casual and hard-core ODS user. I, for one, will have a copy of the book on my desk!

Chris Olinger
Chief Technology Officer
d-Wise