PING

Library of macro/function utilities for statistical data handling and processing in production environments.

PING Is Not GSAST!

Usage

Check the usage page.

Running PING SAS macros

Currently, SAS macros in PING library are made available through the autocall functionality, i.e. they are retrieved by providing SAS with their actual location. In the future, they will be saved as stored processes (/ store option) and, therefore, will be retrieved through the MSTORED option.

There are then different ways to set your environment so as to be able to load and run available PING macros, depending whether you are already running a SAS session or not, e.g. employing:

1. the autocall option:

You will first need to set the path of your install, then you will be able to configure the SASAUTOS environment (defining where to look for macros) using the corresponding keyword with options as follows:

%let G_PING_SETUPPATH=</your/server/PING>; 
options MAUTOSOURCE;
options SASAUTOS =(SASAUTOS 
		"&G_PING_SETUPPATH/library/pgm/" 		
		"&G_PING_SETUPPATH/library/test" 			
		"&G_PING_SETUPPATH/5.1_Integration/pgm/"
		"&G_PING_SETUPPATH/5.3_Validation/pgm/"
		"&G_PING_SETUPPATH/5.5_Extraction/pgm/"
		"&G_PING_SETUPPATH/5.5_Estimation/pgm/"
		"&G_PING_SETUPPATH/5.7_Aggregates/pgm/"
		"&G_PING_SETUPPATH/6.3_Analysis/pgm/"
		"&G_PING_SETUPPATH/7.1_Upload/pgm/"
		"&G_PING_SETUPPATH/7.2_Visualisation/pgm/"
		"&G_PING_SETUPPATH/7.3_Dissemination/pgm/"
		"&G_PING_SETUPPATH/7.4_Services/pgm/"
		/* more... */
		);

This way you will be able to run PING macros. However, this command alone will not allow you to load/set all default configuration parameters (e.g. global variables) associated to the PING library.

2. a default setup macro (e.g., _default_setup_):

In order to load all PING macros, as well as associated default configuration parameters, we provide a configuration file named _setup_.sas (documentation here; file is located in the directory library/autoexec). You can then set your SAS environment with something similar to the following command:

%global G_PING_SETUPPATH
	G_PING_PROJECT 
	G_PING_DATABASE;
%let G_PING_SETUPPATH=	</path/to/your/server/PING/>; 
%let G_PING_PROJECT=	<you_choose>;
%let G_PING_DATABASE=	</path/to/your/data/server/>;
%include "&G_PING_SETUPPATH/library/autoexec/_setup_.sas";	
%_default_setup_;

where we also set the global macro variables associated with your project name (by default, simply PING but you may fork it to another project) and common source datasets. Note however that this will work only if you have not already set your SASAUTOS environment using (e.g. using the options SASAUTOS command like above) since SASAUTOS can be set once only. So as to avoid launching the options SASAUTOS several times, you can put the setup commands above inside a conditional macro as follows, and launch it during your SAS session (or every time you use a PING macro, since it will have no effect, though it will not be very elegant), e.g.:

%macro _ping_setup;
    %if %symexist(G_PING_ROOTPATH) EQ 0 %then %do; 
        %if %symexist(G_PING_SETUPPATH) EQ 0 %then 	
            %let G_PING_SETUPPATH=</your/server/PING>; 
        %include "&G_PING_SETUPPATH/library/autoexec/_setup_.sas";
        %_default_setup_;
    %end;
%mend _ping_setup;
%_ping_setup;

Note moreover that you can implement your own default configuration and load it similarly.

3. an autoexec file to launch your SAS session,

The commands above can be inserted into a file that will be automatically loaded (and ran) by SAS at launch time. This feature is enabled by the so-called autoexec option (see "Customizing Your SAS Session by Using Configuration and Autoexec Files"). In practice, a file (named cfg_SAS_PING.sas with SAS version 9.2) shall be saved in your HOME directory (or any other location), or created on-the-fly, so as to contain the following settings (similar to what is described above), e.g.:

%global G_PING_SETUPPATH
	G_PING_PROJECT 
	G_PING_DATABASE;
%let G_PING_SETUPPATH=	</path/to/your/server/PING/>; 
%let G_PING_PROJECT=	<you_choose>;
%let G_PING_DATABASE=	</path/to/your/data/server/>;
%include "&G_PING_SETUPPATH/library/autoexec/_setup_.sas";	
%_default_setup_;

Then, SAS can be launched by specifying this file in the -autoexec option of the inline command, .e.g. (in general, you will need to be on the SAS server for this command to run):

	sas_autoexec </your/server/PING/>/library/autoexec/cfg_SAS_PING.sas

granted that the location of SAS software has been added to your PATH (otherwise, in our case we would run <SAS_SERVER>/sas/bin/SAS92/SASFoundation/9.2/sas), and considering the configuration file has been saved as library/autoexec/cfg_SAS_PING.sas.

Further, we provide the bash script sas_ping.sh (located in practice in library/bin/`) as an alias for this operation to be performed on-the-fly (hence, no need to create the configuration file beforehand), e.g.:

	bash </your/server/PING/>/library/bin/sas_ping.sh

will launch your SAS session with all desired settings.

4. an autoexec workflow within your SAS EG session:

The autoexec feature of SAS EG can be used to load all PING settings, .e.g by creating an autoexec workflow in your project, and either:

• embedding in it a copy of, or inserting a link to, the file cfg_SAS_PING.sas (recommended), or

• inserting a reference to the default configuration file _setup_.sas (located in library/autoexec) and linking to an embedded program that runs (only) %_default_setup_;.

SAS EG will then submit the programs associated to the autoexec workflow when your Workspace Server session is created on the SAS Server (see "Writing code in SAS Enterprise Guide"). This occurs at launch time of SAS EG.

Hence, depending on your context, you can follow any of the methods described in the instructions below. Note that our preference for the settings goes to the last two methods. In particular, the last one being preferred for users running on SAS EG.

Running PING Stata functions

Running PING R functions

R functions are not defined into a package. They need to be loaded manually.

About

documentation	available at: https://eurostat.github.io/PING/
version	0.9
status	since 2016 – ongoing
contributors	(see the list here)
license	EUPL (cite the source code or the reference above!)

Other useful resources

• SAS programs and macros for statistical graphics: SAS Graphic Programs and Macros.
• Github SAS code repositories for statistical data handling: Hu's Programming SAS and SAS ListProcessing, as well as Bass's SAS macros.
• Unit testing framework for SAS programs: SASUnit and FUTS.
• A useful library of SAS macros, including some tools to export a SAS dataset to Sqlite.

References

• Grazzini J. and Lamarche P. (2017): Production of social statistics... goes social!, in Proc. New Techniques and Technologies for Statistics, doi:10.5281/zenodo.3240501.