topic Re: How to find if a program or macro is currently being used by other users in SAS Programming

How to find if a program or macro is currently being used by other users

ajaybetham — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 01:14:09 GMT

Hi there,

I would like to know if there is a way to find out if the program or macro is currently used by any other user.

For Example:

There is a macro with the name macro1.sas. It is currently opened for edititing in a Sas studio or Sas EG. How to find out that macro1.sas is opened for edititng. Please suggest a programmatic way to do this. I am assuming there might a procedure or macro that helps me achieve this.

Thanks for your help!

Regards,

Ajay

Re: How to find if a program or macro is currently being used by other users

ChrisNZ — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 05:23:50 GMT

EG does not lock program files, so any number of users can open them without anybody knowing.

Re: How to find if a program or macro is currently being used by other users

ajaybetham — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 05:38:53 GMT

Thanks Chris!

I understand EG doesn't lock. But my requirement is to know if the program is open for editing by any other user. I want to know this programmatically.

Thanks 🙂

Re: How to find if a program or macro is currently being used by other users

ChrisNZ — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 06:17:38 GMT

"without anybody knowing" answers your question.

Since files are not marked or locked by EG, there is no way.

If you want to keep track of versions, this may interest you however:

http://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings14/SAS179-2014.pdf

http://www.sascommunity.org/wiki/Version_control

Re: How to find if a program or macro is currently being used by other users

Reeza — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 15:01:29 GMT

Are you using a version control system where someone has to check out their code to edit it?

Re: How to find if a program or macro is currently being used by other users

ajaybetham — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 15:20:57 GMT

No. I just need to find out if a program is opened by other user in Sas Studio or Sas Eg. I know when you open a program in Sas studio, you can see ~ before the program.

Re: How to find if a program or macro is currently being used by other users

error_prone — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 13:35:25 GMT

@ajaybetham wrote:
No. I just need to find out if a program is opened by other user in Sas Studio or Sas Eg. I know when you open a program in Sas studio, you can see ~ before the program.

As @ChrisNZ already mentioned: "Since files are not marked or locked by EG, there is no way."

Program-files are simple text files, that can be viewed and edited by any text editor.

Please explain why you need to know if a program is opened by other users?

Re: How to find if a program or macro is currently being used by other users

ajaybetham — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 06:38:43 GMT

No, I am not using error control mechanism.

Re: How to find if a program or macro is currently being used by other users

ajaybetham — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 06:39:19 GMT

I am not using version* control mechanism.

Re: How to find if a program or macro is currently being used by other users

Reeza — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 14:43:02 GMT

@ajaybetham wrote:
I am not using version* control mechanism.

I think that's your answer though, if you want to know who's using a file and make sure changes are not overwriting each other you should be implementing a version control system. Git interfaces with SAS.

Re: How to find if a program or macro is currently being used by other users

mkeintz — Sun, 24 Sep 2017 20:28:23 GMT

You didn't get the answer you want, but you got a correct answer. How about marking this topic as solved?

Re: How to find if a program or macro is currently being used by other users

ajaybetham — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 07:07:45 GMT

I am surprised to know that there is no way to know the files being edited in Sas.

Re: How to find if a program or macro is currently being used by other users

mkeintz — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 13:23:37 GMT

Yes, you may be "surprised to know", but you now do know. Basically it just says that the task you want is handled by special purpose software (version control) that handles "content management" of all sorts of files, not just sas programs.

So how about helping the rest of the community by marking this question as solved? If, contrary to the responses of very experienced participants in this topic, you learn of a way to solve this entirely within sas, then edit this topic with that solution.

Re: How to find if a program or macro is currently being used by other users

ajaybetham — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 13:44:55 GMT

it is not solved. You can close the thread though.