topic Skip the Creation of ALLDATA set in json libname engine in SAS Programming

Skip the Creation of ALLDATA set in json libname engine

A_SAS_Man — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 19:14:54 GMT

I am using the json engine to parse some very large datafiles. I notice in the process of parsing these files that it creates a dataset of "ALLDATA" which seems to just be some sort of appending of all the other tables/objects that isn't super useful to me. From the reading I've done my understanding is this is an artifact of how sas processes json files rather than how a json file is structured necessarily (but open to corrections there). Is there a way to have it skip doing this to help speed up the process? Code I'm using is very simple but see below.

filename dat ZIP '/data/file.json.gz' GZIP;

libname dat json;

Re: Skip the Creation of ALLDATA set in json libname engine

Tom — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 19:21:34 GMT

@A_SAS_Man wrote:

I am using the json engine to parse some very large datafiles. I notice in the process of parsing these files that it creates a dataset of "ALLDATA" which seems to just be some sort of appending of all the other tables/objects that isn't super useful to me. From the reading I've done my understanding is this is an artifact of how sas processes json files rather than how a json file is structured necessarily (but open to corrections there). Is there a way to have it skip doing this to help speed up the process? Code I'm using is very simple but see below.
filename dat ZIP '/data/file.json.gz' GZIP;

libname dat json;

That code is not going to create any ALLDATA dataset, it is just defining the LIBREF that points to the JSON file.

If you don't want to read DAT.ALLDATA then don't read it.

But there is an option that should suppress it. Try it and see if it works in your version.

https://documentation.sas.com/doc/en/pgmsascdc/9.4_3.5/lestmtsglobal/n1jfdetszx99ban1rl4zll6tej7j.htm

NOALLDATA

Suppresses creation of the ALLDATA data set.

Note	This option is available beginning with SAS Viya 3.4.

Re: Skip the Creation of ALLDATA set in json libname engine

A_SAS_Man — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 19:54:25 GMT

When I navigate to the "dat" library I can see an ALLDATA file. It looks like I may have too old of a version of SAS to use that option with unfortunately, I'm just using SAS EG I'm not familiar with Viya.

Edit: It seems as though the NOALLDATA keyword might be working for me even though it wasn't showing up before... Testing it out now and will accept this if it works.