Custom Tasks for SAS® Enterprise Guide® Using Microsoft .NET

Chapter 1. Why Custom Tasks? 11
of the source code that you need to build the examples and modify them for your own use. Some
examples are provided in the C# language, some in Visual Basic .NET, and some in both.
You do not need to understand how these tasks are built before you use them. You can simply deploy
them into your existing SAS Enterprise Guide installation and explore some of the capabilities that you
can add with custom tasks.
Exercise: Download, Deploy, and Access Custom Tasks from SAS
In preparation for this book we have built a collection of custom tasks that illustrate many of the
possible features that you can implement. Most of these examples are described in greater detail later
in this book, but for now you can deploy a read-to-use DLL that contains the tasks, and see them in
action.
To download the example custom tasks, follow these steps:
1. Using your web browser, navigate to http://support.sas.com/hemedinger [Note: example code
and data will be available on this page once the full book is published.]
2. Click on the "Ready-to-use custom tasks examples" link. The link refers to a ZIP archive file.
Use your web browser to download the ZIP file to your PC.
3. Navigate to the location where the ZIP file is located, and extract the contents of the ZIP file
to a folder on your PC. The ZIP file contains a DLL named SAS.Tasks.Examples.DLL.
4. Copy the DLL file to the appropriate custom task folder on your PC, according to the version
of SAS Enterprise Guide that you are using. For example, if using SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3,
the location is "%appdata%\SAS\EnterpriseGuide\4.3\Custom". (For the list of folders to use
for each of the different versions of SAS Enterprise Guide, see the section about "drop-indeployment"
earlier in this chapter.)
Tip: The %appdata% location is specific to your local Windows profile, and the folder
structure varies among different versions of Windows. An easy method for navigating to the
proper folder is to open a new Windows Explorer window, and type "%appdata%" (without
the quotes) in the address bar.
5. Start SAS Enterprise Guide. In the Tools->Add-Ins menu, you should see several new menu
items that provide access to the example tasks.
6. Select one of the task menu items to launch your first custom task!
Chapter Summary
Custom tasks provide a powerful way to extend SAS business intelligence applications. They aren’t
the only way to present custom features to your end users, but they are often the most flexible
mechanism. When you need them, nothing else will do.
Hemedinger, Chris. Custom Tasks for SAS® Enterprise Guide® Using Microsoft .NET. Copyright © 2012 SAS Institute Inc.,
Cary, North Carolina, USA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. For additional SAS resources, visit support.sas.com/bookstore.
Draft copy for promotional purposes. Additional changes may be made during the production process for the book.