topic Re: SAS OnDemand for Academics: ODS not supported? in New SAS User

SAS OnDemand for Academics: ODS not supported?

ryanc1979 — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 04:32:40 GMT

Hi all, I'm trying to learn base SAS, so forgive the simple questions.

I use the following code, following the instructions from SAS Programming 1 Essentials, Lesson 5, Practice 1, Level 2. Here's the code:

I confirm the library is correct and it does generate results, but I cannot figure out why I keep getting this error:

 ERROR: Unable to establish ODS Graphics context.

It doesn't want to set up a graph. Is this something it doesn't support? Note I do have the beginning line "ods graphics on;" and per the learning that's supposed to let me make graphs. Is that not in OnDemand? Is there another setting in OnDemand I need to flag/remove to get this to behave?

ods graphics on;
title "Selected Park Types by Region";
proc freq data=pg1.np_codelookup order=freq;
tables Type*Region / nocol crosslist
plots=freqplot (groupby=row scale=grouppercent orient=horizontal);
where Type in ("National Historic Site", "National Monument", "National Park");
run;
title;

Screenshot attached so you don't have to hunt through everything...I think I have it right. What am I missing?

Thanks,

Ryan C

Re: SAS OnDemand for Academics: ODS not supported?

ryanc1979 — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 05:45:42 GMT

Looking at the solution, I think this trip up here was that I used "title" and not "title1". Someone confirm if that was the issue. Thanks!

Re: SAS OnDemand for Academics: ODS not supported?

ballardw — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 07:09:38 GMT

Best would be to show the LOG. Copy the code and all of the other messages from the log. Suggest starting a new session and only running the code to assign the library/data set and the steps you show. If you get the same results then show that log. The new session means there will be less stuff to wade through that might be involved.

That sort of error is a bit odd and may relate to something else you had done earlier, possibly related to which ODS destination(s) are open.

Your question about the Title statement I would say is not likely to be the issue. The use of Title as the same as Title1 goes back about 40 years so I doubt very strongly that it has any effect.

Re: SAS OnDemand for Academics: ODS not supported?

Kurt_Bremser — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 07:47:13 GMT

Same advice: run only the example code in a completely new session.

Researching the message found me some mentions of the USER option being set, which seems to interfere with the graphics system.

Re: SAS OnDemand for Academics: ODS not supported?

ryanc1979 — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 15:39:50 GMT

Hi both,

So doing as instructed, the new session doesn't care about "title" vs "title1", so that doesn't look like its the problem as you suggested; it runs fine now. does SAS OnDemand for Academics have some setting with ODS? I don't have a "user" option (at least, in this point of the Base SAS learnings I haven't found any reference to it, so I haven't come across it). I understand it exists, I researched and saw the same thing in the documentation, I just don't know why that error flagged yesterday, and now today it's working just fine.

I'm extremely confused. Is this a "quirk" of SAS?

As requested, code from today and log file:

ods graphics on;
title "Selected Park Types by Region";
proc freq data=pg1.np_codelookup order=freq;
tables Type*Region / nocol crosslist
	plots=freqplot (groupby=row scale=grouppercent orient=horizontal);
where Type in ("National Historic Site", "National Monument", "National Park");
run;
title;

 
 1          OPTIONS NONOTES NOSTIMER NOSOURCE NOSYNTAXCHECK;
 NOTE: ODS statements in the SAS Studio environment may disable some output features.
 73         
 74         ods graphics on;
 75         title "Selected Park Types by Region";
 76         proc freq data=pg1.np_codelookup order=freq;
 77         tables Type*Region / nocol crosslist
 78         plots=freqplot (groupby=row scale=grouppercent orient=horizontal);
 79         where Type in ("National Historic Site", "National Monument", "National Park");
 80         run;
 
 NOTE: There were 204 observations read from the data set PG1.NP_CODELOOKUP.
       WHERE Type in ('National Historic Site', 'National Monument', 'National Park');
 NOTE: PROCEDURE FREQ used (Total process time):
       real time           0.42 seconds
       user cpu time       0.17 seconds
       system cpu time     0.02 seconds
       memory              26144.65k
       OS Memory           52916.00k
       Timestamp           11/14/2025 03:35:35 PM
       Step Count                        47  Switch Count  4
       Page Faults                       0
       Page Reclaims                     6898
       Page Swaps                        0
       Voluntary Context Switches        443
       Involuntary Context Switches      9
       Block Input Operations            0
       Block Output Operations           1632
       
 
 81         title;
 82         
 83         OPTIONS NONOTES NOSTIMER NOSOURCE NOSYNTAXCHECK;
 95

Re: SAS OnDemand for Academics: ODS not supported?

Cynthia_sas — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 16:05:11 GMT

Hi: In order to provide concrete assistance, we'd need to see the log of the original code that generated the error and the original log. However, this article https://sas.service-now.com/csm/en/using-the-sas-sg-procedures-or-ods-graphics-with-the-user-system-option?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0041619 indicates that some combination of options could cause the error and so it seems likely that when you started over in a fresh session, you may have reset any options that any of your code changed. If it happens again, your best resource would be to capture the full log and either post that or optionally (and possibly more productive in the long run) open a case with Tech Support.
Cynthia

Re: SAS OnDemand for Academics: ODS not supported?

ryanc1979 — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 16:41:33 GMT

Sounds good. I'll just assume I wrote something previous to the existing exercise that was causing SAS OnDemand to get wonky. Thanks for the help everyone.