Date:         Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:45:59 -0400
Reply-To:     Gerhard Hellriegel <gerhard.hellriegel@T-ONLINE.DE>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Gerhard Hellriegel <gerhard.hellriegel@T-ONLINE.DE>
Subject:      Re: Rant: I really hate the SAS pricing structure

On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:31:13 -0500, data _null_, <datanull@GMAIL.COM>
wrote:

>On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 2:53 AM, John Hendrickx
><John2.Hendrickx@gmail.com> wrote:
>> pharmaceutical industry. The way SAS stores user formats - an
>> important part of your data - in a separate file is one argument to
>> use anything but SAS for critical analyses.
>
>What are you talking about?  A format is only "part of your data" if
>you say so.  Do you understand formats?


in addition:
if there is important information which HAS to be part of the data, why
using a format for that?
It is a very easy deal to convert the unformatted data with a function
call. In other tools you don't have another CHANCE, you have to store what
you need in the data! So don't tell us that it's a ADVANTAGE to have less
possibilities!

I currently work for a big bankhouse. If we had no formats, SAS would be
dead here!
Ok, for your small datasets it might be no probleme to store things
like "this is a very important information for everyone", "this is not a
too important information for anyone...", instead of 0, 1.
We have datasets with more than 600 billions of obs with 40 or 50
variables of that kind. Try to handle that without formats!
Gerhard