Rich, Handsome & Successful: The Power of SAS® to the Scientists & Statisticians in Research

This paper presents how a successful SAS/AF application used by scientists and researchers was presented to users through a Windows application for usability and speed whilst retaining the robustness of the SAS 9. SAS Integration Technologies was used to interface the tried and trusted algorithms to a bespoke application developed using Microsoft Visual Basic .NET. This created an interoperable and scalable environment for the current and future of the business. A discussion and presentation is made of the techniques used to integrate SAS via the integrated object model (IOM) of Integration Technologies, through the use of workspaces, stored processes and access to SAS metadata and data via OLEDB. A presentation will be given of the final application demonstrating the ability to harness the power of SAS/Stat and SAS/Graph to users who are focussed on the rapid delivery of answers within Unilever's Research and Development Division. INTRODUCTION Unilever’s consumer researchers analyse various aspects of consumer research data for household brands such as Dove, Lynx and many more using SAS/AF applications allowing the capture of results, statistical analysis and visualisation of these data for interpretation and reporting. THE PROBLEM After 20 years use a solution was sought that enabled Unilever’s consumer research and development to remain competitive and keep abreast of the latest data capture and analysis methods. A task based SAS/AF application Research Guidance System (RGSYS) was the first application to be redeveloped. By modern standards the interface was unintuitive and slow to use. Figure 1 shows a SAS/FSP screen which was a typical method of retrieving parameters for the process from the user: Figure 1: A typical user interface in the original application