SAS University Edition

SAS University Edition is really SAS, and it's really free of charge to anybody with a university email address. The website is

http://www.sas.com/en_us/software/university-edition.html

Regardless of operating system, SAS lives in a virtual linux machine. You interact with it through a browser interface called SAS Studio. With SAS running in the virtual machine, you point your browser to a localhost address. This way, it is really platform independent. The interface is very nice, with tabs rather than separate windows for the program, log and output files. You can print files from the browser, or save output in pdf, rtf or html format.

You get your data into SAS via a shared folder -- shared between your computer and the virtual linux machine. Just begin the name of the data file with "/folders/myfolders/" That's the path to the shared folder on the virtual linux machine. The shared folder on your machine can be anywhere. If you are a Dropbox user and want to use SAS University Edition on several different machines, putting the shared folder in your Dropbox is a good choice. Sub-folders inside the folder myfolders are okay.

When you create the shared folder on your machine, make sure the spelling and capitalization of the folder names is exactly according to instructions. On your machine, the shared folder must be called SASUniversityEdition, with a sub-folder called myfolders.

It's a big download, and furthermore before you download SAS itself (actually, the image of a linux machine with SAS installed), you need to download the "virtualization" software that makes the virtual linux machine work on your computer. There are two sources, VMWare and Oracle. For the Mac, Oracle's VirtualBox is a better choice, because VMWare Fusion is just a 30-day trial. Some of my Windows-using students have had better luck with VirtualBox too.

So VirtualBox is recommended unless you're already a VMWare user. Start by downloading your copy of VirtualBox HERE

Then download SAS. Instructions on the SAS website are very clear. However, if a student tries to do this the evening before the first assignment is due, s/he may be in for a long night. It took me a couple of hours, though it did not require much attention.

There are two different versions of the virtual linux machine, one for VirtualBox and one for VMWare. Make sure you download the right one for the virtualization software you picked! This is an easy mistake to make, and it's time consuming.

Currently (as of September 2017), SAS University Edition is not in any computer labs. I don't know if it's even legally possible for it to be in a computer lab, and it might not be a good idea at U of T anyway, because other students' work could be in myfolders on the machine in the computer lab. It should be possible to access U of T's licensed installations of SAS over the internet through SAS Studio if things are set up properly at the server end. Someone should look into this.

What could go wrong? I have had no trouble at all, but the software does require one GB of RAM for the virtual machine. Maybe students with weak hardware or older operating systems could have trouble.

To run SAS, first start up the virtualization software and double click on SAS University Edition. Once the virtual linux machine gets going, you will be directed to connect to http://localhost:10080. I found it useful to bookmark this address.

The first time you connect to the localhost address, you should click on Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and see how to set up the shared folder you will use to get your data into SAS. Do this before running SAS Studio for the first time. To shut SAS down under VirtualBox without seeing disturbing error messages,

  1. Select VirtualBox, so it is running in the forground.
  2. From the Machine menu, choose Close and then Save State.

    This writes the contents of the virtual machine's RAM to a little file. It's much faster than quitting SAS and shutting the virtual machine all the way down. Also, resuming is a lot faster than booting the virtual machine and starting SAS. You could choose ACPI Shutdown instead of Save State, but I don't see why you would want to.

  3. SAS Studio will tell you that the network connection is no longer available. Choose Exit.
  4. Quit VirtualBox and close the browser window in which SAS was running.
It does not seem to do any damage if you quit in a less organized way, but it can be ugly. I don't know the details of quitting SAS under VMWare, but how hard can it be?

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