The next meeting of the Michigan SAS Users Group (MSUG) will be held on Thursday, 3/21 from 1:30-4 pm at the SAS offices, 1000 Town Center, Suite 2100 in Southfield. The agenda is as follows:

SAS Warehouse Administrator 2.2: Demonstation and Discussion - John Podgurski, SAS SAS Warehouse Administrator is designed for the IT professional responsible for creating and managing data warehouse/data mart processes. SAS Warehouse Administrator is a customizable solution that offers a single point of control, making it easier to respond to the ever-changing needs of the business community.

Features of the SAS Warehouse Administrator Graphical User Interface will be presented using slides and a live demo. Extraction, transformation and loading strategies for use of the adminstrator will be discussed. The role of metadata in code generation, documentation and application integration will be highlighted.

Have a Strange DATE? Create Your Own INFORMAT to Deal with Her - Venky Chakravarthy, Pfizer SAS users often deal with date values such as "December 20, 1999." To an end user or for a report, such date values appear logical, intuitive and informative. Indeed, for some limited purposes, even a SAS programmer finds it sufficient to read these dates as literal character fields. However, often we need to use these dates to calculate the number of days elapsed- the trick lies in reading the above value as a SAS date value.

The WORDDATE FORMAT can be readily used to write out such a date value as in the above example. However, we cannot easily read in such a date value because a corresponding INFORMAT does not exist. Two approaches are examined from the perspective of (1) ease of use for a junior programmer and (2) efficiency in reading such dates when dealing with large files. The first approach reads the value as a character literal, breaks it into multiple pieces, and puts the individual pieces back together applying FUNCTIONS and FORMATS. The second approach builds a user-defined INFORMAT and applies the INFORMAT when reading the data. Also, some of the new features like PICTURE FORMAT DIRECTIVES will be discussed.

So...Let's Talk About Your Career: Using a Job Coach to Get Ahead - John G. Agno, President, Signature, Inc. Professional coaching is an ongoing partnership that helps clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Through the process of coaching, clients deepen their learning, improve their performance and enhance their quality of life.

Coaching can help clients find answers to such questions as: Am I ready to move up to the next level or get more meaning from my work? How can I leave my corporate job and become a free agent?

The coach meets with a client who chooses the focus of conversation while the coach listens and contributes observations and questions. Coaching accelerates the client's progress by providing greater focus and awareness of choice. Coaching concentrates on where clients are today and what they are willing to do to get where they want to be tomorrow. The goal is to coach people to greater awareness, purpose, competency and well-being, which often translates into greater compensation, job satisfaction and better use of our skills and abilities.

Location The SAS office is located in the Town Center in Southfield, near Northwestern Highway. There is visitor parking in the parking structure behind the building.

Nancy Brucken Clinical/Regulatory Informatics Pfizer Global Research & Development, Ann Arbor (734) 622-5767 E-mail address: Nancy.Brucken@pfizer.com