Re: To SAS or not To SAS (or whatever else)!!

Bill Howells wrote: 
I've used SAS for about 10 years mainly for statistical analysis and
moderate-sized data management takss, and never used SPSS.  It is very
easy for SAS to output reports in various formats, html, rtf.  Also to
import and export different format datasets.  I don't have experience
with super-large datasets; however, I know programmers who develop
complex data management systems completely in SAS.  I never heard of
any industry-type applications being written with SPSS or whether SPSS
even has that capability.  My completely biased opinion is go with SAS!
 Bill H, MS, Wash U School Medicine

I think you'll find that R is about 11 years ahead of SAS in statistical methodology and about 20 years ahead in graphics capabilities. Plus it's free. And if you want beautiful output, consider the linkage between R and LaTeX - see http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/twiki/bin/view/Main/StatReport

Frank Harrell



neilanessa@xxxxxxx wrote:

To SAS or not To SAS (or whatever else)!!

Hi all,
This message is directed primarily to individuals in these groups who
have
long experience using both SPSS and SAS (or any other statistically
oriented/data intensive analytic tools) with a heavy data volume and
frequent
reporting requirements.   I am pretty open to any and all suggestions.

In any normal context I wouldn't be caught dead with a SAS manual,
and my obit will probably read, "We had to pull the SPSS manual from
his cold dead hands, and needed to break some fingers to boot."

BUT, I recently accepted a position where part of my responsibilities
will involve the selection of off the shelf data base tools, analytical
software,
programming tools and use them to build rather large scale solutions.


Questions I need to answer to management:

Relative efficiency and ease of data access via a Database (ODBC
connection).
-We will be building a fairly large data base containing both
contemporaneous and historical data.  What I mean by fairly
large most people would consider unfathomly HUGE.
Multivariate Data feeds every ten minutes over a year.  Often there
will be
multiple years from multiple sites.

Ease of use and training/learning curve for new users (I am a seasoned
SPSS professional with 20 years of experience with SPSS,  I used SAS
in Graduate school, but it seemed like having a root canal without a
local).

Cost of licensing.

Flexibility of Output (Is SAS still text based output?, what do other
statistical/reporting software solutions generate).

Graphical capability (mostly sequence charts, histograms, bar charts) .

Output Exports (Word, Excel)?

Customizability, External Programability. AUTOMATION!!!
(Preferably from VB.Net or C#.Net -yeah, I'm tossing VB6 into the
history bin!-)

Quality and ease of use/customizabilty of the User Interface.

Data Export capability/flexibility

The analytical/statistical reporting side is not terribly complex but
the
data volume will be immense and multiple person's will be using the
data at any given moment.  I hope this is clear wrt our requirements.

BTW,
I read the Comparisons document produced by Michael Mitchell at UCLA
and have even posted my own comments on one of the SPSS lists
(possibly this one *WHEN IS SPSS inc going to respond???*).  His report
might be useful to university students/professors, but fails to address
the needs of people trying to make decisions/recommendations in the
context I currently find myself, so please DO NOT SUGGEST I use that
information as a guide (too much of it is simply incorrect -read my
post
for some examples!)

Thanks, Neila
Feel free to email me directly, but I believe it will be useful to have
this
discussion in the public forum



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