[3] SAS was developed in the 1960s by Anthony James Barr, who built its fundamental structure, [4] and SAS Institute CEO James Goodnight, who developed a number of features including analysis procedures.
[6] Base SAS is a fourth-generation procedural programming language designed for the statistical analysis of data.
[9] Most base SAS code can be ported between versions, but some are functions and parameters are specific to certain operating systems and interfaces.
[11] Various SAS editors use color coding to identify components like step boundaries, keywords and constants.
[12] It can read in data from common spreadsheets and databases and output the results of statistical analyses in tables, graphs, and as RTF, HTML and PDF documents.
[21] The macro language can be used for functionalities as simple as symbolic substitution and as complex as dynamic programming.
[24] SAS is used for preparing input data, and building and optimizing machine learning algorithms.
[29] According to Gartner's Magic Quadrant and Forrester Research, the SAS Institute is one of the largest vendors of data mining software.