2 Custom Tasks for SAS Enterprise Guide Using Microsoft .NET
A custom task is the easiest and most natural way for a user to access a proprietary process.
However, a custom task can require a significant investment in time and expertise to create. In most
cases, the return on investment—realized in consistency, control, and ease of use—far outweighs
the cost of developing the task.
Why Isn’t Everything Built In for Me?
If every conceivable SAS process was already built into SAS and accessible at the touch of a
button, there wouldn’t be any room for customers to add their own intellectual property to the
system. (And, SAS consultants couldn’t earn a living.)
SAS offers hundreds of modules, called procedures, which perform specific analyses, produce
reports, and manipulate data. SAS Enterprise Guide provides almost 90 tasks that use the most
popular procedures to accomplish much of what customers need to do.
In addition, SAS provides rich programming languages that you can use to do almost anything in
the world of data manipulation, reporting, and logical flow. These languages include the DATA
step and the SAS macro language. It would be impossible to create a set of tasks that represents
everything that you can do with these languages. Why, SAS experts are still inventing new uses for
these languages every day! The application of SAS languages varies from company to company,
industry to industry, and department to department.
Options for Custom Processes in SAS Enterprise Guide
If you need to customize a process that isn’t covered by a built-in task in SAS Enterprise Guide,
you have several options.
Write a SAS program.
For a SAS programmer, it’s the ultimate in flexibility. Anything that you can do in a DATA
step, macro language, or SAS procedure is available to you in a SAS program. What’s the
problem with this approach? The only person who understands how to write the ultimate SAS
program is a SAS programmer. If you have an audience that includes non-programmers, you
probably need something more controlled.
Write a SAS program and add prompts.
With SAS Enterprise Guide, you can add placeholder values, called prompts, to your project.
When you reference one of these values in a SAS program or in any task, SAS Enterprise
Guide presents a user-friendly prompt dialog box that collects values from the user. When you
attach prompts to a SAS program, you can make the program more usable. There is a wide
range of prompt values that address a variety of situations, and the user doesn’t need to
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