topic Re: Insufficient memory log error - identify what causes it in SAS Programming

Insufficient memory log error - identify what causes it

csetzkorn — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 08:50:18 GMT

My log file contains this error message:

ERROR: Insufficient memory.
ERROR: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of insufficient memory.

Ussually this is due insufficient space for WORK library datasets but i have been assured by our IT support that Saswork is currently only 56% full. What can I do to find out more details about this error to ultimately solve this issue? Thanks!

Re: Insufficient memory log error - identify what causes it

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 09:09:19 GMT

Insufficient memory points to RAM, not disk.

Please post the log including the step that caused the ERROR, and some information about the dataset(s) used (variables, number of observations, cardinality of class variables, if such were used)

Re: Insufficient memory log error - identify what causes it

mnjtrana — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 09:15:09 GMT

What proc are you running or is it datastep? Please provide the logic where you encountered the issue.

You can also try checking what's your memsize setting at your end. You can try increasing the memsize and see if that works for you.

options memsize=max;

Cheers from India !

Manjeet

Re: Insufficient memory log error - identify what causes it

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 09:21:15 GMT

Keep in mind that MEMSIZE can only be set at SAS invocation, either from the commandline or through the config file.

Re: Insufficient memory log error - identify what causes it

csetzkorn — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 13:00:53 GMT

thanks - so inclusion of: options memsize=max; in my driver SAS program would not make any difference (did not get an error message).

Re: Insufficient memory log error - identify what causes it

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 13:07:38 GMT

But you do get a WARNING:

16         options memsize=max;
                   _______
                   30
WARNING 30-12: SAS option MEMSIZE is valid only at startup of the SAS System. The SAS option is ignored.

Re: Insufficient memory log error - identify what causes it

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 13:58:09 GMT

As an addendum: MEMSIZE problems often point to inefficient programming. Around here, the workspace server (9.2) runs with 192 MB, and we very rarely run into memory problems. Most often this is caused by using summary procedures with a class instead of a by, and the class variables having a high cardinality.

Re: Insufficient memory log error - identify what causes it

csetzkorn — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 15:56:04 GMT

Agrree but sometimes you inherit inefficient code and you do not have time to optimize (-:

Re: Insufficient memory log error - identify what causes it

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 16:00:55 GMT

@csetzkorn wrote:
Agrree but sometimes you inherit inefficient code and you do not have time to optimize (-:

If you do not have the time to do something right, then why are you doing it anyway? Not having the time to correct things is the one poor excuse that perpetuates shitty code. Because the next time that bullshit code causes you grief, you get into even more trouble and have even less time to fix it, and on and on and on. Until you find that you have wasted a man-month by not taking the one hour that would have fixed it in the first place.