topic Re: autoexec-egp.sas for Enterprise Guide in SAS Enterprise Guide

autoexec-egp.sas for Enterprise Guide

Ron_MacroMaven — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 12:37:59 GMT

Hi Krewe:

I am back from a few Regionals

where I awoke at 5 am one morning last week in TX,

and collected all my notes from the past year

and got working:

An Autoexec for SAS Enterprise Guide

which calls an autoexec for the site toolbox

that allocates filerefs and librefs
for the site library of utilities.

Later that morning the EG experts said:

"Well, yes, we have had some questions about whether this could be done."

programmers using EG are needed for testing.

contact me off-line for details

Ron Fehd "Start-Up Options" maven

Re: autoexec-egp.sas for Enterprise Guide

jakarman — Sat, 09 Nov 2013 12:36:25 GMT

http://blogs.sas.com/content/sasdummy/2011/01/10/you-asked-for-it-the-autoexec-process-flow/

Re: autoexec-egp.sas for Enterprise Guide

Ron_MacroMaven — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 13:18:33 GMT

thank you!

my autoexec-egp is slightly different than what Chris described in his blog.

it does two actions

1. allocates both site and project file- and lib-refs

2. modifies option sasautos: adds both filerefs project and site-macro to the autocall search paths

3. %includes the project autoexec.

Notes:

1. case sensitive:

Chris reports SEG searches for initcaps: Autoexec

My routine is named lowcase autoexec-egp

and %includes the project lowcase autoexec.

2. folder names:

projects_root: e.g. C:\SAS-projects

the site utilities are in folder:

...\SAS-site\includes

...\SAS-site\macros

Another project may be named

...\Project-A

and has programs in a child folder

...\Project-A\sas

the project folder contains

...\Project-A\sas\autoexec-egp.sas

...\Project-A\sas\autoexec.sas

rationale: As a programmer I have many projects.

Key to this idea that a programmer may develop utilities

either parameterized %includes

or macros

and do both unit and integration tests of them in SAS,

i.e, separate from SEG.

Using autoexec-egp.sas allows SEG access to those site utilities.

I shall restate that:

Using autoexec-egp.sas allows SEG access to those site macros.

I am still waiting for technical reviews of this item in my book.

So: Stay Tuned

Ron Fehd Start-Up Options maven

Re: autoexec-egp.sas for Enterprise Guide

ChrisHemedinger — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 13:40:38 GMT

The Autoexec process flow is not case-sensitive. "autoexec", "AUTOEXEC", "aUtoExec" flows will all trigger the Autoexec process flow in EG. I'm sorry if my blog post was misleading on that front.

We trigger on the name "autoexec" only because that's a convention that people are accustomed to -- there is nothing magically "autoexec-ish" that specifically ties it to traditional SAS AUTOEXEC.SAS processing. We could have called it "Run Me First", but decided to camp on a concept that people already used for a similar purpose.

A difference in Ron's approach is that it places the autoexec content in the context of the other "assets" (SAS programs) that are referenced already in the project. It's another way of working that might appeal to those who are accustomed to a very disciplined organization of SAS files, segmented by project (not talking EGP project file, but actual "work assignment" project).

Chris

Re: autoexec-egp.sas for Enterprise Guide

Ron_MacroMaven — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 14:11:41 GMT

thank you Chris for the note about case sensitive

One never knows when one might meet a Unix person for whom case sensitivity is an issue.

Ron

Re: autoexec-egp.sas for Enterprise Guide

jakarman — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 19:00:37 GMT

Ron,

If you are ever going to use Eguide and SAS on Unix .. You have mentioned that..
Think about all the small minor differences that can have nasty unexpected effects.

the companion manuals are covering a lot of those diferences, but not all.

The / and \ difference is an easy one everybody knows. The upcase/lowcase is a challenging one. I would advice to use lowercases.

- Windows (and SAS) don not care about the upcase/lowcase namings you can use that as you are convenient with

- Mainframe Oracle and some others are working wiht Uppercase, translating the lowercase to uppercase as needed,

- Unix Linux (all nix-based systems) are case-sensitive. Working with filenames you will already see some of that.

But including wiht a suffix like ".sas" not being specified bur generated convention,
And what to think of autocall macros. The autocall sas-macro source must be lowercase as upcases is not recognized in SAS in that special case.

That is one being faced synchronizing them in a highly controlled environment between all those different platforms.