topic Re: SAS E-Miner optimized code causes warnings when used in the SAS datastep in SAS Programming

SAS E-Miner optimized code causes warnings when used in the SAS datastep

NickVe — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 10:40:15 GMT

When I try to use the SAS optimized code in my datastep, i get the warning below:

"WARNING: Length of character variable I_TARGET has already been set. "

When looking at the sas file itself, I see that the optimized code has three different length statements for the variable I_TARGET, each with a different value for the length ($32, $16 and $32).

Is there an easy way to fix this issue?

The obvious solution is of course to take out two of the length statements which effectively fixes the warning. However I prefer not to do this since the models from E-Miner will be frequently updated and re-trained, meaning that the optimized code will be overwritten each time. This solution is therefore not suitable for automation purposes.
Might it be possible to fix the variable length in E-Miner itself ?

If this issue can not be solved easily, can I turn off warnings on variable length for that particular data step somehow?

Re: SAS E-Miner optimized code causes warnings when used in the SAS datastep

ChrisNZ — Fri, 07 Feb 2020 22:18:29 GMT

Have you tired to always have an I_TARGET variable with a length of 32 when building the model?

Data consistency avoids many headaches.

Re: SAS E-Miner optimized code causes warnings when used in the SAS datastep

NickVe — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 07:29:10 GMT

Hi ChrisNZ,

I completely agree with you, this was actually also what I meant with the question "Might it be possible to fix the variable length in E-Miner itself ?".

The variable I_TARGET is a variable that is generated by SAS itself in E-Miner for the model evaluation. Now I have been looking for some time where I could configure this variable in SAS, but unfortunately I have not found it yet.

Do you perhaps know where I could set this variable length in E-Miner?

Re: SAS E-Miner optimized code causes warnings when used in the SAS datastep

ChrisNZ — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 05:32:03 GMT

I don't have EM, sorry.

So you give EM a $32 variable and it spits out a $16 target variable?

If that's the case:

1. It seems wrong to me and you may want to ask tech support to reference this issue for the developers to fix.

2. You need to fix it yourself sadly

>If this issue can not be solved easily, can I turn off warnings on variable length for that particular data step somehow?

options varlenchk = nowarn;

Be careful that if length ITARGET $16; comes first, you might end up with truncated values.

I would be reluctant to use that option.

Re: SAS E-Miner optimized code causes warnings when used in the SAS datastep

NickVe — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 09:22:53 GMT

Hey CrhisNZ,

No problem, I would have probably answered the same if I did not know E-miner. I am already very thankful for the information you have provided.

I share your concern considering turning off the warings. I would rather solve the problem than the symptoms since this is better for maintainability. I will check in with SAS support as well, maybe they might have a solution for this issue.

I will keep this thread open for one more week. If there is no new answer in this time I will mark your answer as the solution since it essentially solves my problem.

Re: SAS E-Miner optimized code causes warnings when used in the SAS datastep

NickVe — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 10:34:46 GMT

As a follow up: Apparently this is a bug in Enterprise-Miner triggerd by the "ensemble model" node. If your target is numeric you can get multiple length statements in the optimized code.