Firstly, I was honoured to be invited to present "Visual Techniques for Problem Solving and Debugging" in the Reporting and Information Visualisation stream.
Abstract: No matter how well we plan, issues and bugs inevitably occur. Some are easily solved, but others are far more difficult and complex. This paper presents a range of largely visual techniques for understanding, investigating, solving, and monitoring your most difficult problems. Whether you have an intractable SAS coding bug or a repeatedly failing SAS server, this paper offers practical advice and concrete steps to get you to the bottom of the problem. Tools and techniques discussed in this paper include Ishikawa (fishbone) diagrams, sequence diagrams, tabular matrices, and mind maps.And I had already submitted "Automated Testing of Your SAS Code and Collation of Results (Using Hash Tables)" into the Applications Development stream. It was subsequently accepted.
Abstract: Testing is an undeniably important part of the development process, but its multiple phases and approaches can be under-valued. I describe some of the principles I apply to the testing phases of my projects and then show some useful macros that I have developed to aid the re-use of tests and to collate their results automatically. Tests should be used time and again for regression testing. The collation of the results hinges on the use of hash tables, and the paper gives detail on the coding techniques employed. The small macro suite can be used for testing of SAS code written in a variety of tools including SAS Enterprise Guide, SAS Data Integration Studio, and the traditional SAS Display Manager Environment.So, if you're attending SAS Global Forum this year, please stop by one or both of my papers, and be sure to say "hi"!