Rating: 
Summary: Thanks for your comments. Here's the Gentle Intro update...
Review: First, thank you for the kind comments about the Gentle Intro, both at Amazon and elsewhere. Royalties from the work are, of course, welcome and a motivator to get out and keep prosteletizing. Person-to-person recognition that the book is helping people deal with a complex language is, in many ways just as rewarding. The computing environment has changed dramtically since I conceived and published the book. Processing power has risen exponetially and costs have been reduced dramatically. Anyone with even a modest budget can acquire a machine that would have made the Apollo-era NASA team salivate. Creation and display of results has been transformed dramatically since the Gentle Intro's publication in the early 90's. Web-based technology and carefully constructed user dialogs make creation of accurate and attractive reports vastly simpler than even the sagest sage could have predicted 10 years ago. What does this have to do with the book? A lot. For even though it does not address interface issues, it continually emphasizes the importance of good coding practices in Base SAS. Ultimately, even if you're writing the "sexier" SAS/AF or SAS/INTRNET code, you still need to have a sound understanding of Base SAS fundamentals. That is what the Gentle Intro was designed to do, and still accomplishes admirably. The first edition has sold well - it passed 25,000 units in 1999 - but will be updated. Work on the Second Edition will begin in 2000, and should be available in 2001. In keeping with the desire to prepare the reader with a sound understanding of Base SAS concepts, the emphasis will remain on reading, manipulating, and reporting techniques. New PROCs will be addressed, and I'll add chapters on SQL and the macro language. All of this will reflect changes through Version 7. If you have any comments on the book and/or have suggestions for topics in the Second Edition, please contact me at fcd1@mindspring.com. Thanks again for buying the book (or even considering its purchase)
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent introduction
Review: I learned the hard way when it comes to SAS. I would type code, submit in a batch mode on the mainframe and watch the logs with all kinds of errors. I only wish I had known about this book when I first started programming in SAS. Good job Frank!
Rating:
Summary: Very comprehensive and easy to follow.
Review: I learned the hard way when it comes to SAS. I would type code, submit in a batch mode on the mainframe and watch the logs with all kinds of errors. I only wish I had known about this book when I first started programming in SAS. Good job Frank!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent introduction
Review: I started learning SAS with this book. Of the various introductory/intermediate guides to SAS I've read, I think this is the best organized and easiest to follow. SAS is very confusing at first, and most books don't help much at first. This is an exception. After this book, there are lots of other good books on SAS, but this is where I'd start.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent beginner's book
Review: I used this book in grad school to refresh my very limited SAS knowledge for a course I was doing. I'd used other books during my undergrad days, but none of them was as helpful as this one. It's a good way for a beginner to ease themselves into SAS without getting tangled in the complexities. Now, several years down the road with many years of experience as a SAS programmer, I still recommend this book to anyone who asks me to point them in the direction of a good book to use for learning SAS.
Rating: 
Summary: not bad for us amateurs
Review: I was a SAS tyro when I purchased this book. I had taken the 4 day SAS for programmers course, and I was practically helpless. After I had worked the examples in this book, I was actually able to do useful work in SAS. The book continued to be a useful reference on elementary "how to" issues for the next year. The data disk provides innumerable worked examples of the sort that arise in day-to-day SAS work. I am grateful to the authors for making my entry into this business less painful than I had feared. The title is right on target. It is an introduction. Very soon, my SAS problems were past its purview.
Rating:
Summary: not bad for us amateurs
Review: I was a SAS tyro when I purchased this book. I had taken the 4 day SAS for programmers course, and I was practically helpless. After I had worked the examples in this book, I was actually able to do useful work in SAS. The book continued to be a useful reference on elementary "how to" issues for the next year. The data disk provides innumerable worked examples of the sort that arise in day-to-day SAS work. I am grateful to the authors for making my entry into this business less painful than I had feared. The title is right on target. It is an introduction. Very soon, my SAS problems were past its purview.
Rating:
Summary: This is a good beginner's guide.
Review: I went to the Fundamentals of SAS course held at the SAS Institute and was left in dire need of more information. This book was a first step. The exercises in the book were helpful and reinforcing. If you need more than brginner's knowledge, then you'll have to purchase another book but this is good to get started.
Rating:
Summary: A fabulous introduction to SAS essentials
Review: If you are in need of data management or analysis, SAS is likely big on your list. This book gives extremely clear and useful introductions to how SAS is structured, how to manipulate and organize data, and some basic statistical procedures (descriptive statistics, ANOVA, OLS models, etc.) are also presented. Official SAS manuals are usually bulky, complicated, and difficult to understand, particularly if you have little/no experience with SAS. This book can take a complete beginner through data set creation and manipulation into substantially more complex and important procedures and functions. As this is an introduction to the SAS system, the more advanced functions in SAS, such as SAS STAT, are not covered in any detail. However, in order to understand how to actually use SAS and manipulate data so as to employ these higher level procedures, this book is excellent. This is the absolute best introduction on how to use the SAS system I have seen, but it has lots of useful information for people with some basic SAS knowledge as well. It is presented in the style of a textbook,with each section concluding with problems (with answers provided) that the aspiring SAS programmer can solve. If you are just starting to look into SAS, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. 'If I was able to do it, anyone can.'
Rating: 
Summary: Good
Review: This book is definitely useful, and I understand that it is often even used as a classroom textbook. This book certainly covers a lot of territory. I give it 3 starts since the writing is good but isn't quite as easy-reading as a few other SAS books. For beginners, I might suggest instead 'SAS programming By Example'. It explains details very skillfully and in a step by step fashion! Better yet, perhaps buy both books - that may be better than having just one or the other. Again, this books is definitely useful.
| 
