topic Re: check if there is a lock on the sas table in SAS Programming

check if there is a lock on the sas table

mariopellegrini — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 14:11:26 GMT

Good morning.

is there a code to check if there is a lock on a sas table? that is, if it is already open.
Thank you

Re: check if there is a lock on the sas table

AhmedAl_Attar — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 15:15:31 GMT

Hi @mariopellegrini

This paper has a sample macro that will provide the functionality you are looking for

Play Nice with Others: Waiting for a Lock on SAS Table

Hope this helps

Re: check if there is a lock on the sas table

mariopellegrini — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 15:41:41 GMT

Thanks, but I just need a code to check if a table is locked or not

Re: check if there is a lock on the sas table

ballardw — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 16:10:10 GMT

@mariopellegrini wrote:

Thanks, but I just need a code to check if a table is locked or not

The LOCK statement can LIST the status.

lock lib.member list;

will show message in the log similar to:

NOTE: LIB.MEMBER.DATA is not locked or in use by you or any other users.

or other lock status.

The Lock statement also sets a value for the system macro variable SYSLCKRC . Automatic macro variable value will be 0 if the last lock statement is successful. >0 if the lock statement is not successful. So one use is to attempt to Lock the file and if it fails, i.e. you can't get a lock, assume it is already locked. Verify the existence of the member first though.

Remember to CLEAR the lock if successful in acquiring the lock.

There are other behaviors that depend on use of products like SAS/SHARE and I'm not sure about other products.

Re: check if there is a lock on the sas table

Quentin — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 16:47:37 GMT

This paper suggests that the LOCK statement isn't necessarily reliable if you don't have SAS/SHARE.

https://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings17/1465-2017.pdf

Re: check if there is a lock on the sas table

Kurt_Bremser — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 18:47:15 GMT

If this should be part of an update process, and your SAS runs on UNIX, you can simply delete the dataset file before you write the new dataset.

Re: check if there is a lock on the sas table

mariopellegrini — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 05:38:27 GMT

the SYSLCKRC variable gives me a value greater than zero even keeping the table open. with the lock lib.member list statement I can't "capture" the value obtained in a variable...