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The Very Tool to BIG DATA
January 10, 2014

The Very Tool to BIG DATA

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

9.3

Overall Satisfaction

  • So far, SAS is the best tool for me to manipulate and analyze big data (I also use R and SPSS). It can handle enormous data files and the number of records is generally limited to the size of my hard disk.
  • It comes with PROC SQL procedure which allows me to perform SQL queries on the SAS data files. With only SAS, I can do whatever I need to my datasets.
  • Although sometimes writing SAS codes is a bit tedious, its Macro procedure allows me to simplify my work. I also can save the codes and run them periodically.
  • The learning curve is much steeper compared to the other analytics softwares. But it is such a powerful tool that once you learn it, you will love it.
  • With SAS, I was able to build statistical models from tremendous amounts of transactional data to identify key factors driving the company's business. SAS analysis also provided us great insights into customer segmentations as well.
It is expensive, but it does the job well.
It depends on how much knowledge my colleague has on data analytics and how much time he/she can devote himself/herself to learning a new software. If he/she is relatively new to data analysis and cannot spend a long time learning SAS coding. I would recommend him/her to use SPSS which has a very simple point and click interface. If he/she has data warehousing/SQL experience before and wants to dig deep into data, he/she probably is a good starter to learn data mining through SAS.