SAS Enterprise Guide Reviews

I am currently using this solution for testing purposes. I am working for a pharmaceutical company in Belgium, and we are building a data warehouse by using SAS Data Integration Studio, and we are using SAS Enterprise Guide to test our development. We are building Enterprise Guide projects by using query builder, filters, and other things. We have also built stored procedures. Sometimes, we also write SAS base code to perform unit tests after development and to do some sanity checks to respond to UAT questions. Overall, we are using the majority of functionalities of SAS Enterprise Guide. 

A client has used SAS Enterprise Guide to build an ETL process that involves extracting and transforming the data and producing reports. These reports are very crucial and useful for their monthly and daily activities. By using SAS Enterprise Guide, they are able to deal with end-to-end processes for their business.

Filter and sort query builder is valuable. The ability to do advanced SAS programming is also a useful feature because we can do anything by using Enterprise Guide. 

It has a lot of functionalities. We can build ETL processes. There are clients who are using SAS Enterprise Guide to build ETL processes. They have a SAS-based program that is scheduled to run at a certain frequency to produce some reports for the business. It is a very useful tool for ETL unit tests and functional tests. You can also do data science projects in SAS Enterprise Guide by using different statistics. During my MBA, we used SAS Enterprise Guide for our statistic course.

To query the data, there are many solutions such as SQL, but these tools are only a part of the integration. They are only useful for querying the data and require knowledge of SQL, so they are not suitable for business users. SAS Enterprise Guide can be very easily used by business users to filter and sort the data and build queries. It is not necessary to have coding skills to use SAS Enterprise Guide. For this reason, it is attractive for businesses.

Our data warehouse is built on the Netezza database. We have SAS BI, and we populate the Netezza database. When we have tables with, for example, a hundred million rows in Netezza, SAS Enterprise Guide doesn't work. It doesn't return any results. It works for around 30 to 40 million rows, but it is not working for anything more than that. This issue is only with the Netezza database. With Oracle, it is quite good. They can improve its performance with the Netezza database.

There should be one unique tool that includes SAS Data Integration Studio and SAS Enterprise Guide for more integration capabilities. With SAS Enterprise Guide, it is not possible to create connections and libraries and build transformations that can be used for other projects. This tool should have all capabilities that SAS Enterprise Guide does not have. Such a tool would be perfect because it will be used by developers and business users at the same time.

In addition to the integration capabilities, they should also provide more deployment capabilities. There should be an option to easily create SAS packages and export them from one environment to another. There could also be a possibility to connect with R and Python. Open-source tools are hot in the market nowadays, and it would be good to extend its capabilities. 

I have been using this solution since 2005. It has been almost 16 years.

It is very stable. 

It is easy to extend for fast data integration functionalities. We have around 1,000 users. They are developers, business analysts, and project managers.

In terms of usage, my clients don't have any plans to expand its usage.

They are responsive and very good. They respond within a day of creating a ticket. 

It is not quite easy to deploy. When we worked on the SAS migration project, the migration to Enterprise Guide was quite difficult. The deployment duration depends on the project. Generally, it would take a few days to solve all the issues.

For the SAS migration project, we worked with the SAS Belgium team. With their help, it was okay, but it should be easier.

In general, SAS has high prices, which is a reason why some clients don't use SAS solutions. The licensing is on a yearly basis.

I would recommend this solution. It is a very good tool for outputs from different domains, such as ETL reporting, data science, etc. It would be good to bring more functionalities similar to Data Integration Studio so that we have one single tool. 

I would rate SAS Enterprise Guide an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the product for data analysis and investigations.  

I think that the ease of use is the most valuable feature. I know SQL. I even taught SQL. But new people who come to the tool without in-depth knowledge of SQL or people who do not have an analytics background can still use the tool. It is very easy for these new users to climb the learning curve using SAS Enterprise Guide because of the way it was created with ease-of-use in mind. It is well-oriented to the business user.  

In no time new users are able to create workflows. Obviously, it is best if they have some basic knowledge of how things work in doing analysis — like the concept of joins, data profiling, and maybe some other SQL-related concepts. But the key here is they do not need to know how it is coded or the exact commands. All the features are available within Enterprise Guide through a drag-and-drop interface so queries can be built without extensive knowledge of how that works behind the scenes.  

The ease-of-use makes the tool valuable even for someone who is near the beginner level.  

I think machine learning should be added to the product. It already has virtually everything from the data wrangling perspective. Machine learning concepts could further enhance the user experience and the results.  

The concept of visualization could also be added because, currently, we need to use a separate tool. We use Business Objects for data visualizations.  

Competing products — like in case of Alteryx that is just in trial versions for now — has both machine learning concepts as well as some of the visualization capabilities within the data profiling features. SAS Guide will have to have these features to keep up with competing products and their capabilities.  

If these elements do pan out properly in Alteryx, I may like it better than SAS Enterprise Guide overall. I have a data science background but the more advanced data science features are new in these products and they are very useful in analytics.  

So SAS should work on ML (Machine Learning) features, visualizations, and even more on ease-of-use. It is good but everything can get better.  

I have been working with SAS Enterprise Guide for six years.  

We have not yet had any stability issues with the product. First of all, it is working well. Secondly, on the hardware side, we thought that we need to have more resources, so we did a capacity planning exercise involving SAS. They gave us some recommendations to improve our environment moving forward. We are installing a new setup on new hardware based on those recommendations. This should maintain our current level of stability and maybe enhance performance.

I feel that SAS has a good foundation. It has not given us a lot of problems when it comes to performance. We were being proactive. It works really well in combination with Teradata, but there is a lot of room for performance optimization with both tools.  

Using both platforms — and by that I mean featuring both SAS and Teradata — we do get our data out. In telco, the data volumes are huge, but even though that is the case we do not usually get stuck or experience stability issues.  

There are a lot of ways to get the performance optimization you need from products, get the work done, and delegate your time. It takes evaluation and revisions to accomplish those goals.  

There are many more business users in our organization, but there are only about seven people who really use Enterprise Guide as technical people. We do not see much of a problem with scalability for either group of users.  

Technical support is good. Whenever we have a problem, we have technical support sessions. It can be improved, I believe, but I would say that it is not bad either. It works for us.  

We do use other tools on occasion although we are presently focused on Enterprise Guide as our core in analytics. Ultimately the goal is to get the best results in the easiest way. If that requires changing tools, that may be necessary. Right now we are using SAS along with Teradata.  

The initial setup is a bit complex. For the guest access setup, that is something that we do ourselves. But when it comes to the server installation, that is where we require support from SAS. When it comes to the server installation, the configuration is usually done by SAS themselves. The setup is something that is certainly too complex for business users or people who do not have a technical background. It is usually good to involve SAS even if you are going to an upgrade. It can just make things go more smoothly and keep from wasting time with unnecessary issues.  

We just have one guy for the maintenance of the system. If there is a problem, then he can rely on support. There is only one guy because the product is pretty stable.  

When looking at different tools on the market for data analysis what you need depends on what you want to do. If you have a portfolio within your organization, you may feel that you will need a lot of other tools in addition to make a proper analysis. SAS is a broader solution. It is not just the Enterprise Guide. It has marketing automation and there is even stream processing. Then there is Enterprise Miner. Enterprise Guide is a suite and not just a one-dimensional tool.  

If you feel that you are ready to make an investment and you need the capability of advanced analytics within your organization, you will be able to utilize the whole tech stack with Enterprise Guide. If that is the case, then obviously I think you should go for SAS because it is a more mature and evolved product than most other products. In addition, the opportunities for integration with the SAS platform is really good.  

If you need a specialty architecture, you have Alteryx on one side and you have SAS on the other side. If you do go with Alteryx, then you have a separate campaign management tool and you may not be able to get the full benefit of an integrated solution.  

People considering SAS Enterprise Guide should also look at Alteryx. It is pretty simple. Some people on my team feel that Alteryx is actually much easier to use for what they do and that its interface is much better even if it is similar to Enterprise Guide. The overall availability of different kinds of features is much better in Alteryx.  

I think the first step of evaluating potential solutions should be to look at your roadmap. If you want to go start simple, then obviously you can start with any tool. But if you have a roadmap in place or if you are not a beginner, then I would suggest going for one integrated platform as a suite rather than multiple tools. Having an integrated solution is probably a better overall.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Enterprise Guide as a seven overall. It is a good product but it lacks some important features other products are coming out with.  

Mostly accessing medical claims data from mainframe warehouses, plus occasional spreadsheets, etc. Aggregating and scoring according to specified algorithms and identifying medical practitioners who are statistical outliers with respect to certain procedures.

Loading results of these analyses into Microsoft SQL Server and writing queries for access by users without SAS licenses.

Running SAS EG on a networked Windows PC, connected to a SAS Grid on a Unix network, accessing data warehouses in Teradata.

In general, for large complex programs, I found myself wishing I had access to the base SAS environment.

People did not use the EG specific features, just writing long programs in Base SAS, using EG to launch them. 

Also, I could never get the ability to run code in parallel on the SAS Grid. For instance, long running data pulls from multiple databases, when working, were slow when running the entire program sequentially in Base SAS.

Areas where SAS EG does a better job than regular SAS are in the realm of importing and exporting data. For instance, exporting a SAS data set in Unix to an Excel spreadsheet on a PC is a simple task compared to doing the same task with Base SAS.

The usual virtues of drag and drop style interfaces with a flow chart-like depiction of the project and the ability to separate the project into individual flows, i.e., one for the slow data pulls from the databases, a second for data crunching, and a third for the outputting to the PC. The ability to copy the underlying SAS code from a node and modify it and/or reuse it elsewhere, and also the built-in versioning of program code stored in the project, is very useful for something that is run periodically and frequently updated.

The ability to include it as part of the project code housed on either the PC or the UNIX box is handy, although EG doesn't provide the ability to version the code.

I had difficulty with the diagrammatic flow chart style representation of projects. When projects got too large and complex (which was basically every project, except the most trivial). There just wasn't enough real estate to display the flow chart and dependencies without a lot of scrolling, even when a flow was down to minimum tasks. My recourse was making the flow less "atomic". E.g., rather than use the various subset, etc., tasks as program nodes to display the details, I would write chunks of code that did a few things and use them as SAS program nodes.

Three years.

Management liked it a lot because the license per seat was cheaper than a traditional SAS environment.

We use Tableau for visualization and SAS EG for analysis. SAS EG is more useful for analysis, while Tableau is better for visualization.

In Daman, I had used the data module, where you can join the table and take whatever data we require for our work. You join tables and create columns as you wish, then analyze data in various ways depending on what the problem is. We used it to detect fraud, abnormalities, anomalies, abnormal trends, etc. It's also good for exporting and importing tables.

Now that I have experience with Tableau, I think the visualization part of SAS EG could be more user-friendly and easier to use. Tableau is very easy to use. It just does a lot of work by itself, including color schemes. I think that could be incorporated easily into SAS EG, which would make it a much better product. Then you would not need Tableau.

Tableau just adds a few visualization aspects onto it, but it doesn't have powerful analytics like SAS. You can join a number of tables in SAS. That's what I find very useful. You can keep on doing that. You can just change one and get another report. You can save the script and run it again. SAS has all kinds of useful features, so I think it is very good for analysis.

We actually saved millions of dirhams on licensing data, just by sitting here and getting data for a month. Now they're developing their routine using it as if it's Excel. I need to develop it because they don't really have it here. They were only using Tableau, but Tableau basically just sums up the analysis. It cannot do certain analyses. Mostly it's summing up and finding the fraction and percentage. You can easily do that, but it is a bit tricky to use because you cannot join so many tables and you cannot double it. That kind of function is not there in Tableau. That is the main drawback in Tableau.

SAS is very good actually. It's not really user-friendly and it's difficult to configure as well. It's difficult to configure the graphs and charts. In Tableau, it's really easy to do that and I think that can easily be developed in SAS, considering that there are complex analysis functions already provided by the solution.

It should also be easy to integrate any database like PostgreSQL. I have spent more than one hour on more than one occasion trying to connect it, but it did not work. I think that should not be the case. It should be just really comfortable to do this.

I worked at the Daman insurance company for four years and they used SAS EG all the time. Now I am at another company that uses both SAS EG and Tableau. 

The stability is quite good. However, I found out that we don't have a direct connection to the database. The company I'm working at now doesn't have a data warehouse. Data needs to be exported into Excel and then re-imported into SAS EG. That is going to be a little tricky because we really want all the rules to be imported. That's an issue. I don't know how deep the problem is, but there's a software limitation in importing so many Excel files and then joining them to the database. In Daman, where I worked earlier, we had direct connectivity to the database, besides the fact that we had a data warehouse.

Right now, I don't know. I feel that before we build anything, we need to validate the data. Validating the data can be very tough and tedious. For instance, the other day I took one year and six months of data from a hospital and I'm now importing it one month at a time. It's very tedious. They needed data for their whole warehouse.

Then it would be very useful to have a lot of people working on it. It could take off nicely. First, you need to know that the data is correct, though. Right now, we don't know that the data is correct. It is very important to clean the data and ensure that your work is providing data which is really what you're trying to measure. That itself takes some time.

I import data each month and check that the number matches. I check that the net amount is correct. It all takes time. I know it's true if somebody else gets the same answer. Importing is where the issue is, though. That is where I'm having trouble because sometimes I find there's only partial importation.

I insert an extended table in the columns and rows with good formatting so that it doesn't miss anything. I think that that works well.

I have contacted them. We are currently having a problem because I have two databases. One is a pharmacy and I am trying to connect to the pharmacy database. They're allowing me to connect to their line. However, SAS EG is not connecting to the database on the pharmacy side. There are two sides, the pharmacy-side, and the hospital-side. On the pharmacy side, their data is available on the screen, but it's not connecting.

We've tried them both several times. They came online and tried on their end also. Everybody tried to find history, but they were just getting stuck. They went through so many stages. Importation was very successful, but trying to get the last days did not succeed. There was some issue there. They saw this issue in every pharmacy database that was directly connected to Tableau. They usually manage their data with Tableau and so I had to export it from there.

The initial setup was simple. Once you understand the concept of their scale, how they join, and the logic behind the whole thing. If you know how to join tables this shouldn't be difficult. It's not complex. The tables are complex, but the underlying principles are not complex.

We had a three-day introductory course only. It doesn't tell you every unique case. There are a lot of things, but you can figure it out. I think you start doing it right away, but then you can go to YouTube and see someone use it as well.

I've got a first degree in mathematics, so I understand this kind of concept easily. That is my background. Still, I need to know how this works. We figured it out from YouTube and friends. Now I understand the product well.

When I joined this company, they did not have SAS at that time. They did not know what SAS was. They only had Tableau. I told them to let me try that with that. I taught myself Tableau and could use it because I knew that the concepts are the same. The logic is the same. Boolean algebra is the same. Just like that, I started using it. Within two hours, I started using Tableau.

Now I have SAS also, so I am using both now.

I would rate it quite high, but because I don't have experience with other similar solutions, I cannot say how good this is. I have nothing to compare it to, as my experience is limited to SAS EG and Tableau. For my purposes, it has been great, but I don't know how well it can find patterns by itself with machine learning.

I read in the newspapers and the internet that so much more is doable. The preliminary analysis could be done with a machine. Right now we have average, mean, median, but machine learning could provide much more.

From that, instead of looking at thousands of lines, one could just look at a few graphs and see where you should dig further into. Perhaps you could have a video or dashboard.

I don't mean generic dashboards. I mean a dashboard, which you can then pull up and down to see what else is there. They have that technology these days. I think it should be possible without stretching too much.

I would rate this solution as seven out of ten.

I use it for programming. When we import data sets or databases, we work with data management and program scripts, etc. We have its basic license.

We work with large data sets that cannot be handled in Excel. SAS gives us the opportunity and the privilege to work with large data sets. It is very easy with SAS, and it saves time. For example, if I want to use the same data with Excel, it would take a whole day, but with SAS, I can do it in two or three hours at the most.

We are able to work on the server, and I can copy a data set and share it with someone in my team. Similarly, if I want some data from them, I can get it. Being able to work on the server and being able to switch from one user to another is a good thing.

It is reliable and powerful, and its community is very wide.

They should provide more information for the errors or logs. Currently, it gives you just the error message without explaining anything.

I have been working with this solution for two years. I use it daily for my work.

It is reliable.

It is scalable. It can handle large data sets. There is no problem with that.

Currently, we have a team of five people. I have a manager and other colleagues. All of us don't have the same role. We all handle data, but we have different diplomas. I work as an actuarial analyst, statistics engineer, and data analyst.

I am not sure if we have a contact for technical support from them, but there is a big community of SAS.

We used the open-source product R, which is not exactly similar. We switched because it was a part of our strategy to use SAS. In terms of time response, R is not very powerful. SAS is more powerful in terms of data management., and someone who is not very experienced with programming can use the UI.

I was not involved in the initial setup. Its maintenance and administration are handled by IT, but they're not very well-trained in this solution. It is a new one for them, and sometimes, we do get stuck because they are not very experienced with this solution and its features.

It is very expensive. We have a basic license, and there are many features that are not available with the basic version.

You must have a basic background in programming, such as SQL programming, to use it easily.

I would rate SAS Enterprise Guide an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is to analyze the sales data of our company. We have an in-house database that has all data relating to our agents and our production. I use it when I want to have a quick check on the data. I'm the finance system and process senior manager in the company.

I think that this solution is a good start to get into the data analysis field. The license for this is not per user so anyone who wants to use the product can approach it, and can take a look at it, rather than it involving a lengthy process. If the solution was per user, we would need to take into consideration whether it was necessary for a particular user to access it. I think that's how it changed our business. Previously we had a dedicated data team, so every request needed to be sent via them. Now the solution is open to everyone in the company so they can get on board with all the data analysis.

I think the Query Builder is very valuable. You just need to track and drop, everything is on the interface, without the need of too much coding.

For improvement, I think the user interface is too complicated. For some of the advanced functions, you need to learn some SAS code in order to get what you want. I'm ideally looking for is something that is purely code free and user friendly, which doesn't require any kind of programming.

For additional features I really want something that can make it easier for me to schedule the programs. I do know that SAS now has a solution to schedule the program, but if it could be something built-in within the SAS Enterprise Guide, that would be great.

I've been using this solution for about three years. 

I think it is quite stable. In some circumstances, such as suddenly losing internet connection, it might return an error and you need to restart the whole program in order to make it work. 
Sometimes some data can be lot but overall I think that the stability is good.

Due to the subscription mechanism, everyone in the company can use it so it's very good in terms of scalability.

I haven't needed to contact technical support because they have a very large online community for support and I can easily find the answers to what I need just by using Google.

I think initial setup is quite straightforward but if you compare it to say, Access, then  it's more complicated to use than other, more traditional tools.

Anyone implementing this solution should check the online manual where they have very good information on how best to use the product. Whenever you have a problem that needs to use a data solution, you can just do a quick Google, and add in the link to that website, and it can show you a lot of solutions. There are also free education manuals and training courses from SAS itself. It's worth taking a look at the SAS programming essential one, and get used to this product. 

Always save your data!

I would rate this product an eight out of 10. 

We use this solution for moving users that need statistical data analysis and data transformation functionality that do NOT have a background in programming and/or SQL to a tool that allows for some degree of self-service. It also provides access to data sources (databases that require administrative access) that do not support individual user access.

Users that want to code SAS but don't have expertise or comfort coding and/or running SAS in a Unix background will use this as a SAS IDE, and not as a true graphical process environment with the ability to "re-use" common process patterns. If the user base can be given some good basic guidelines it can be a serious productivity improvement tool.

Statistical functionality and basic database interaction can become very straightforward for business users that don't have a background in SQL and data analysis. It allows business customers not familiar/comfortable with Unix environments to continue to use SAS functionality with interaction to data sources that are outside of their immediate control (application databases on remote hosts).

I would like to see integration with schedulers when run from hosting environments such as Citrix. Currently, SAS Enterprise guide in  CITRIX hosted environment appears to have access to Windows task manager to schedule EGP's. However, as soon as the client logs out due to windows "roaming profiles" being dynamic the scheduler does not work! It does not fail just doesn't do anything.

In administered/remote client/server environments( such as CITRIX), the ability for users to catalog and save database metadata independent of administrators interaction and support would be helpful.  Currently the user must (with the help of an administrator ) access a database from SAS Console with a valid credential and retrieve the database metadata (limited to what the user has access to via credential). If each user has potentially different access rights based on ID/password at the database an administrator with greater privileges must login to the database and catalog the metadata to cover ALL of the database metadata potentially used by any single user/group and then make it available to all groups. 

We have been using this solution for three and a half years.

We use this solution for data manipulation and statistics.

This solution allows for simplified working with large datasets.

The visual interface makes teaching new analysts how to use the tool easy.

I would like to see better Charting in this solution.