What will happen to the current Advanced Programmer credential?
The current Advanced Programmer credential will continue to be offered until the end of October 2019. If you hold the Advanced Programmer credential, it will not expire and will continue to be a valid representation of your skill. If you choose to update to the new Advanced Programming Professional credential, we will offer a lower cost upgrade exam in June 2019 for people who currently hold the Advanced Programmer credential.

How do we access SAS during the exam?
During the exam, you will be provided with a connection to a remote lab within your exam. The lab will be presented on the right side of the exam, and the questions and instructions are on the left. You can resize the windows so that the lab can occupy most of the screen.

Which SAS interface do I use to program during the exam?
You will have access to your choice of 3 interfaces: SAS Studio, SAS Enterprise Guide, or Display Manager.

Will the exam be all practical questions?
No. This will be a hybrid exam. There will be some practical questions and some standard test questions that do not require a lab. The lab questions are presented first, followed by the standard questions. Practical questions can be weighted heavier that the standard questions. Questions that are weighted heavier will be identified on the exam. The exam is designed so that candidates will spend the majority of the time allotted on the practical projects.

How are the programming projects assessed?
The programming projects are assessed with a scoring macro that is stored on the lab computer. This is different than the Base Programming exam, where exam questions are used to assess your results. At the end of your project, you will invoke the scoring macro. This macro will investigate the results of your project to determine if you completed it correctly. It will look at parameters and content of any output data set as well as values of macro variables stored in the symbol tables. This macro will also investigate the code that you wrote to check that the problem was solved as requested. These are broad checks, so there is still a significant amount of freedom in your chosen coding solution. For example, in the SQL topic, we want to ensure that an SQL procedure was used to create the output data set rather than a DATA Step. The scoring macro will return a 3-digit value to the SAS log. You will record this 3-digit value as your answer to the project to determine your score for the project.