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SAS Enterprise Guide pros and cons

Vendor: SAS
4.1 out of 5
112 followers
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Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

SAS Enterprise Guide facilitates statistical functionality and basic database operations for business users without SQL or data analysis skills.
It supports robust data operations such as joining tables, creating columns, and analyzing data for purposes like fraud detection.
SAS Enterprise Guide excels in importing and exporting data, making tasks like exporting datasets from Unix to Excel simpler compared to Base SAS.
The tool enables effective collaboration, allowing users to work on servers, copy datasets, and easily share them with team members.
It is versatile, supporting various tasks including ETL processes, unit testing, functional testing, and data science projects.

CONS

Users experience challenges with performance, particularly with large datasets in the Netezza database.
There is a need for improved integration and deployment capabilities, including easier creation and export of SAS packages, and connections with R and Python.
Integration with schedulers in hosted environments like Citrix is desired.
Advanced functions often require learning SAS code, making it less user-friendly for some users.
The stability and technical support response times have been concerns for users.
 

SAS Enterprise Guide Pros review quotes

SN
Nov 27, 2019
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.
reviewer1388265 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 16, 2020
The product has a drag-and-drop feature that is excellent for business users and that makes it easy-to-use.
MB
Apr 26, 2021
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.
Learn what your peers think about SAS Enterprise Guide. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
JR
Jun 15, 2022
Similar to Microsoft Access, you can drag and drop. You can simply drag and drop objects onto the page and create various flows to establish your query within the project. You can extract those queries from the preview as needed.
reviewer1314771 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 8, 2020
The Query Builder is very valuable.
reviewer1734420 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 4, 2022
The data cleaning part is valuable. SAS is a very powerful tool to work with and connect with different sources. We have several tables, and we are looking up tables from one place to another place. We are connecting with different data sources. The data is not coming from one source. There are several sources of data, and we have information coming from different sources. There are some flat files, and there is some information from the data warehouse.
KT
Apr 25, 2021
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.
GZ
May 7, 2020
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.
reviewer2232579 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 12, 2023
One of the features of the SAS Enterprise Guide is that it has a server, and we can access the server.
Karunakar Kankata - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 10, 2023
It streamlines our workflow involving multiple steps, from data extraction to modeling, and it is aimed at improving various aspects of banking operations, including customer retention and risk management.
 

SAS Enterprise Guide Cons review quotes

SN
Nov 27, 2019
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's 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.
reviewer1388265 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 16, 2020
The product is missing a visualization component so we have to use a separate tool for visualization.
MB
Apr 26, 2021
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.
Learn what your peers think about SAS Enterprise Guide. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
JR
Jun 15, 2022
I would like it to give more information rather than just a forever loop that forces you to shut down the system. Give you more error messages without stopping the entire project, or even the entire application. That it displays more error messages rather than terminating the application.
reviewer1314771 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 8, 2020
For some of the advanced functions, you need to learn some SAS code to get what you want.
reviewer1734420 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 4, 2022
It is expensive.
KT
Apr 25, 2021
They should provide more information for the errors or logs. Currently, it gives you just the error message without explaining anything.
GZ
May 7, 2020
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.
reviewer2232579 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 12, 2023
Recently, we realized that SAS Enterprise Guide is not so stable and gives us some outputs which are not suitable...Sometimes it's quite hard to report its stability issues.
Karunakar Kankata - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 10, 2023
The technical support response time has been consistently slow, and this has been a concern.