In the present article an analysis is carried out to study the boundary layer flow and heat transfer characteristics of a second grade, non-Newtonian fluid through a porous medium. The stretching sheet is assumed to be permeable so that suction effects come into play. The effects of viscous dissipation, non-uniform heat source/sink on heat transfer are addressed The basic boundary layer equations for momentum and heat transfer. which are non-linear partial differential equations, are converted into non-linear ordinary differential equations by means of similarity transformation Analytical solutions are obtained for the resulting boundary value problems. The effects of viscous dissipation and non-uniform heat source/sink, Prandtl number, Eckert number and suction/injection on heat transfer are shown in several plots for two different heating processes (CST and PST cases). Dimensionless surface temperature gradient is tabulated for various Values of the governing the parameters (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.