topic Re: SAS 9.4 Explorer: find function returns false result in Developers

SAS 9.4 Explorer: find function returns false result

adnavv — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 08:34:57 GMT

Hello,

SAS 9.4 Explorer has been our best tool so far to search for simple keywords in our catalogs. However today, the Find window returns a result which, after checking, is false (there is no occurrence of the keyword 'fda' in R.Regbl.Batiment07_creation.scl) :

My guess is that a SAS index needs to be refreshed, but how ?

Has anyone experienced the same situation ?

Many thanks for any inputs,

Adnavv

Re: SAS 9.4 Explorer: find function returns false result

LinusH — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 08:55:15 GMT

It was quite awhile since I used the search function in DMS SAS.

I don't think there is an index here that needs to be updated manually, this kind of metadata in SAS is available immediately to the SAS session.

If you feel this is a flaw, you might want to engage SAS Tech support, they can guide you how to verify your problem.

Re: SAS 9.4 Explorer: find function returns false result

AllanBowe — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 11:09:55 GMT

Your best bet would be to export all this content from catalogs into text files and keep the source in GIT. This is much easier to work with, and trivial to search.

It's one of the first things my team does when we embark on SCL Modernisation projects.

Re: SAS 9.4 Explorer: find function returns false result

adnavv — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 12:46:19 GMT

Dear Allan,

Thanks for sharing. Unfortunately, our many catalogs contain multiple *.screen (SAS FSP) whose source code cannot be automatically extracted (see this discussion). So far, the only way we have to reach the source code of these *.screen (for eg: to look up for the occurence of a libname), is to run each application and browse the source code of each of their screens (mod command).

As per illustration :

This practice is not convenient at all and time consuming.

Re: SAS 9.4 Explorer: find function returns false result

AllanBowe — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 14:30:18 GMT

I see. Indeed, quite frustrating. Given that these products will soon be out of support, you might wish to consider a migration project to put them onto a modern tech stack - using a regular web frontend, powered by SAS at the backend.

The nice thing about this approach is that your datasets, filesystem, auto-execs, SAS server etc can all be re-used - whilst ending up with all your code in source control, providing a much nicer interface for end users, and using regular / generic SAS and JS developers for maintenance.