4 min read
Getting Set Up
SAS is commercial software, but you don't need a license to learn it.
SAS OnDemand for Academics (recommended)
SAS OnDemand for Academics is a free, cloud-hosted SAS for students, teachers, and independent learners. Everything runs in your browser, so it works on Windows, macOS, Linux, and even a Chromebook.
- Go to welcome.oda.sas.com and create a free SAS Profile.
- Sign in and open SAS Studio from the dashboard.
- You get a personal home folder (a path like
/home/u12345678) for your programs and data files.
That's it — no installation. This course assumes SAS Studio, but the code runs the same in any SAS 9.4 or SAS Viya environment.
Other ways to get SAS
- At work or university — many organizations license SAS; you may use SAS Studio, SAS Enterprise Guide (a Windows application), or the classic SAS windowing environment.
- SAS Viya for Learners — a free Viya environment offered to educators and their students.
- Free trials — SAS offers time-limited trials of SAS Viya.
Sample data is already there
Every SAS installation includes the SASHELP library of sample data
sets — SASHELP.CLASS (19 students), SASHELP.CARS, SASHELP.HEART,
and many more. The examples in this course use them often, so you can
run them without typing any data.