topic Re: ERROR: Memory Shortage while running proc surveymeans in SAS Procedures

ERROR: Memory Shortage while running proc surveymeans

RMC12 — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 19:07:18 GMT

Hello!

I'm trying to run proc surveymeans on a very large data set (14 million observations), and keep getting the following error messages:

NOTE: Only one cluster in a stratum for variable(s) ReadmitCHG. The estimate of variance for ReadmitCHG will omit this stratum.
ERROR: PROC SURVEYMEANS was terminated prematurely due to a memory shortage while computing quantiles. Increasing MEMSIZE and/or REALMEMSIZE may
allow normal processing to complete.
NOTE: Processing on disk occurred during summarization. Peak disk usage was approximately 62 Mbytes. Adjusting MEMSIZE and/or REALMEMSIZE may
improve performance.
ERROR: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of insufficient memory.
NOTE: PROCEDURE SURVEYMEANS used (Total process time):
real time 1:47.23
cpu time 1:46.69

Here is the code I have been using:

proc surveymeans data=index_events missing sumwgt sum mean;
strata NRD_STRATUM;
cluster HOSP_NRD;
weight DISCWT;
domain IndexEvent IndexEvent*AgeGroup;
var Readmit TOTCHG ReadmitCHG totalreadmissions;
ods output domain=domain;
run;

Does anybody have any advice on fixing the memory issue? I can't seem to figure it out. Thanks in advance!

Re: ERROR: Memory Shortage while running proc surveymeans

Reeza — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 19:18:54 GMT

Have you tried increasing MEMSIZE and REALMEMSIZE as the error indicates?

Re: ERROR: Memory Shortage while running proc surveymeans

RMC12 — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 19:21:55 GMT

I have attempted to but I'm not sure if I am doing it properly. Any advice on how to increase memsize and realmemsize would be great.

Re: ERROR: Memory Shortage while running proc surveymeans

Reeza — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 19:28:30 GMT

You have to set it in the Config file or on startup.

I think there are instructions here that make sense:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37038194/increasing-sas-memory-memsize

Re: ERROR: Memory Shortage while running proc surveymeans

ChrisBrooks — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 08:27:21 GMT

I's not mentioned in the link but you can set memsize and realmemsize to the parameter MAX which will means SAS will use all the memory it can get - whether that's a good idea depends on your environment and how you're using SAS....