I found programming in it very easy, true there are some nuances that are
unique but if I ever had a problem the SAS people were there to help me.
Even after I was quite proficient, I would still use their support. I was
able to teach myself the basics of the language, and had some good help
from my co-workers in increasing my knowledge. I did not find it difficult
to program in. It is certainly much easier than APL!
The reports that were generated, were easy to understand by both actuaries
and non-actuaries alike, and we were able to customize the reports to suit
anybody's need. When I was in a non-actuarial position, I obtained SAS
datasets to create my own reports in Lotus 123.
The IS department was mainly COBOL, but the actuarial programmers were
mostly SAS. Even the IS programmers started to get into SAS before I left.
SAS does start to degrade in performance when dealing with hundreds of
thousands of records, but there are tricks to deal with that (at least on a
main-frame).
Hope this helps,
Charlie Vigorita
----------
> From: JoAnn_O'Hara@notes.pw.com
> To: casnet@lists.casact.org
> Cc: Mark_Littmann@notes.pw.com; Allen_Nielsen@notes.pw.com
> Subject: RE: Do people use SAS
> Date: Sunday, November 09, 1997 7:57 PM
>
> For those of you discussing SAS...
>
> Would you recommend it to handle all of the actuarial work, meaning, the
> analysis of the resulting objects of the data that will lead to your
actuarial
> indications? Or for housing the individual transaction information and
for
> easiest i.e. most flexible and fastest aggregation of that data to your
> vectors, triangles, scalars? Just curious, because what I usually hear,
and
> yes Kirk, many large insurance companies are within the SAS environment
> (Travelers, Zurich, Farmers as previously mentioned, USF&G for some), is
that
> its not user-friendly for a "non-programmer" type, its difficult to store
> calculated results back to it which can then be sent to Corporate Finance
and
> Accounting for reporting and one person's work is not easily transferred
to
> another due to all of the coding that needs to be done. Would you say
that's
> true?
>
> Also, have they worked on the reporting mechanisms to give them a more
windows
> look and feel?
>
> Doesn't Excel coupled with a client/server database (over APL for windows
and
> SAS) allow for matrix algebra in a windows environment and represent a
flexible
> and powerful tool, that will also be easier and cheaper to implement and
share
> across multiple users and departments over time? Plus, it has the
flexibility,
> like SAS, to read many file types?
>
> JoAnn O'Hara
>
>
>
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