Getting Started with ODS Statistical Graphics in SAS ® 9.2—Revised 2009

ODS Statistical Graphics (or ODS Graphics for short) is major new functionality for creating statistical graphics that is available in a number of SAS software products, including the SAS/STAT ® , SAS/ETS ® , SAS/QC ® , and SAS/GRAPH ® products. With the production release of ODS Graphics in SAS 9.2, over sixty statistical procedures have been modified to use this functionality, and they now produce graphs as automatically as they produce tables. In addition, new SAS/GRAPH procedures use this functionality to produce plots for exploratory data analysis and for customized statistical displays. SAS/GRAPH software is required for ODS Graphics functionality in SAS 9.2. This paper presents the essential information you need to get started with ODS Graphics in SAS 9.2. ODS Graphics is an extension of ODS (the Output Delivery System), which manages procedure output and lets you display it in a variety of destinations, such as HTML and RTF. Consequently, many familiar features of ODS for tabular output apply equally to graphs. For statistical procedures that support ODS Graphics, you invoke this functionality with the statement ODS GRAPHICS ON. Graphs and tables created by these procedures are then integrated in your ODS output destination. ODS Graphics produces graphs in standard image file formats, and the consistent appearance and individual layout of these graphs are controlled by ODS styles and templates, respectively. Since the default templates for procedure graphs are provided by SAS software, you do not need to know the details of templates to create statistical graphics. However, with some understanding of the underlying Graph Template Language, you can modify the default templates to make changes to graphs that are permanently in effect each time you run the procedure. Alternatively, to facilitate making immediate changes to a particular graph, SAS 9.2 introduces the ODS Graphics Editor, a point-and-click interface with which you can customize titles, annotate points, and make other enhancements.