SAS/IML

What do you like best?

I generally have good experience with SAS/IML. Graphical User Interface is very friendly and helps simplify pipeline development, documentation, and communication. and can even help with coding. Built-in statistical methods are sufficient for most daily tasks. The program's ability to handle big data is very impressive. I once used SAS/IML on a 50 million row data set and it has absolutely no problem. The outputs look very good, too, and are usually suitable for reports/publications. Documentation is very extensive and has very good examples to follow.

What do you dislike?

The IML coding language is a bit awkward to pick up because it is so different from common programming languages. The beginner coding statements are not too hard to pick up, but writing your own macro is very difficult. Pricing is very expensive, too. This makes it impossible to use SAS/IML for personall purposes.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

If your company/university is willing to pay for a license, SAS/IML is a great option for data analysis. Otherwise, I would not recommend this program because of its pricing.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

I have used SAS/IML to do research about data analysis in cancer. The data set had about 50 million rows but the program's performance was very good. The outputs look very aesthetic, too.