Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: SAS compared to Perl
From: russell@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Russell Fulton)
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 21:32:39 GMT
 <1992Sep13.211257.26114@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> <rick.57.716508425@sjsumcs.sjsu.edu>
Organization: University of Auckland, New Zealand.

rick@sjsumcs.sjsu.edu (Richard M. Warner) writes:

>In article <1992Sep13.211257.26114@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> russell@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Russell Fulton) writes:
>>From: russell@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Russell Fulton)
>>Subject: Re: SAS compared to Perl
>>Date: 13 Sep 92 21:12:57 GMT
>>jfh@netcom.com (Jack Hamilton) writes:
>>
>>>I now do some things using perl on the PC that I would previously have
>>>done in SAS.  Both are useful.  Perl is faster and has better string
>>>manipulation capabilities; on the other hand, SAS has a lot of statistical,
>>>graphical, and data entry tools that perl doesn't.  Different tools for
>>>different jobs. 
>>
>>>SAS's major usage base is still on IBM mainframes, I believe.  Has anyone
>>
>> Not any more I think, SAS runs on all sorts of systems from PCs to
>>mainframes. 

>True, but it is still *primarily* a mainframe/mini package.  But, I do not
>think that the IBM mainframe world is its major field anymore - I think
>that is about split between IBM and DEC.  Yes, it runs on PC's, but
>there is a problem here.  The DOS version is a bit wimpy, too overlayed,
>and an orphan (no upgrades past 6.04 while everything else is moving to
>6.08).  The Windows version has problems.  SAS seems to likethe OS/2 
>platform, in preference to Windows, but the OS wars may change their minds.
>If you doubt that the big machines are still their primary domain, look
>back a year and a half ago when SAS Institute put the Windows version on
>hold so they could concentrate on bug fixes for the MVS, VM/CMS, and 
>VMS platforms.

I agree with what Richard says. I am sure that the most of SAS's income
is currently from large systems. But I wanted to make sure that people
were not left with the impression that SAS only ran on large systems. (I
know that's not what Jack actually said, but some may have taken it that
way.) 

Richard mentions problems with windows release. I have been told that
the reason for the latest delays were to include some new procedures.
The original widows release was to be the last of 6.07 now it will be
the first of the 6.08 releases. 

I beleive that SAS can see that the 'large system' market is srinking
(or at least not growing as fast as the distributed market). They are
working hard a getting their products working across a wide a base as
possible.

One last comment: SAS is a very large system which covers many areas in
any on of those areas you can find a product that does the job better
than SAS. Where SAS comes into its own is when you need to work in more
than one of these areas then SAS's ability to move data effortlessly
between application quickly overrides any minor deficiencies in the
applications.

So to get back to the origin of this thread, comparison of SAS and perl,
if you have some grubby data that you want to cleanup and print a few
simple tables from then use perl. If you want to produce fancy graphics
or sophisticated statistics with the data as well then use SAS. Possibly
after using perl to do the initial data extraction. (SAS can read just
about any formated data file but it is often easier using perl's regular
expressions.)

Cheers, Russell.



-- 
Russell Fulton, Computer Center, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
<rj_fulton@aukuni.ac.nz>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl