There are two independent ways of operating SAS, either using the command line, as discussed in § 2.6, or using the SAS Graphical User Interface (GUI), as discussed in detail in § 3.
SAS's main GUI can be accessed by typing sas on the command line. Also, almost every SAS task has its own specific GUI, which can be individually started by typing task_name -d.
There are advantages and disadvantages in using the command line or the GUI, depending on the type of work the user has to do and the level of proficiency in using SAS. Intensive interactive work on a single dataset is generally more efficiently done with the GUIs. For beginners the GUI is generally better, because it eases understanding of the parameters. However, for processing of large amounts of data, the scripting capability of SAS, which allows to put together a large number of line commands, is of great advantage and extremely efficient. After some tests and familiarization, every user should be able to make use of the best of both SAS worlds.