topic Re: How to prevent locking while viewing a dataset in SAS Programming

How to prevent locking while viewing a dataset

jp — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 21:50:53 GMT

Hi, I wasn't sure if this belongs here or in the SAS EG forum which is what the majority of my team uses.

I'm responsible for updating a library of commonly used datasets, however I can't update a premium table due to one team member having it open which is causing a Lock. This team member has gone on holiday for a week, which means I can't update the table until she gets back, unless I reset her computer which wouldn't be ideal.

I was wondering if there is a way to specify a "NOLOCK" option in the libname (similar to the passthrough option used in PROC SQL) or something similar to prevent this from occurring in the future. I've tested the "ACCESS = READONLY" libname functionality but that doesn't seem to stop a lock on the data when one member is viewing the data.

Cheers for any help

Re: How to prevent locking while viewing a dataset

Peter_C — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 22:28:09 GMT

can you use theoperating system to copy the xxxx.sas7bdat file into another folder?

Re: How to prevent locking while viewing a dataset

SASKiwi — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 22:35:05 GMT

If I am correct in assuming that you are using EG connected to SAS BI server, then your team member must have a SAS process still running on the server.

What you can do is talk to one of your IT administrators and ask them to view all active processes on the SAS server by username and ask them to kill any processes under your team member's username. This should clear the locking problem.

Unfortunately SAS relies on the operating system it runs on for file locking so there is no reliable way to avoid SAS dataset locking problems unless you use SAS's SAS/SHARE product.

If you search the SAS forum on file / dataset locking you will find a lot of users have similar problems. I live in hope that SAS will improve in this area in the future....

Re: How to prevent locking while viewing a dataset

jp — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 22:44:21 GMT

Unfortunately we aren't using a SAS BI Server (as far as I know). Interesting point about the operating system, I had a quick glance at some solution based around editing the registry.. I ruled this out based purely on the IT headache it would likely create.

Re: How to prevent locking while viewing a dataset

SASKiwi — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 00:23:03 GMT

So what is EG connecting to? It has to be either a local SAS session on your PC, if you have SAS as well as EG installed, or a remote SAS server - this is generically called SAS BI Server although you may know it by a different name.

Re: How to prevent locking while viewing a dataset

jp — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 00:27:55 GMT

I believe we use a local SAS Session (which I've understood to be the usual alternative to a "SAS Sever"), but I do have Base SAS + EG installed though I've never heard it described as a BI Server. I don't believe we have the functionality to request processes to be killed on the/a SAS Server.

PS: Hi from NZ

Re: How to prevent locking while viewing a dataset

SASKiwi — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 01:42:16 GMT

OK. So your local PC SAS session(s) - controlled from EG - must be locking SAS datasets stored on a central file server somewhere - is this correct? So apart from rebooting your team member's PC the only solution I can think of is to get an IT suport person to remote into the PC and do an "end task" on the SAS session.

PS: Hi from Windy Wellington!