Hello @fierceanalytics ,
I feel your frustration. I think your SAS application needs indeed to be updated, or redesigned. Mostly at Infra level.
It seems to me as either your system administrators are not at the front lines, or the issues you raise via 1st line support do not arrive them.
There was a discussion long time ago that I sometimes revisit, it was interesting: https://communities.sas.com/t5/Administration-and-Deployment/Moving-SASUSER-to-a-Network-Share/td-p/...
To me the issue is not very complicated. Indeed WORK it is not probably your HOME folder. HOME it is probably the SASUSER variable, or SASINITIALFOLDER. To get out of any doubt, you can run "%put _ALL_;" and find the values of WORK, SASUSER and SASINITIALFOLDER folders.
Once this is clear, you can confront this challenge from the SAS Application point of view, of from the Infra point of view.
From the SAS application point of view:
https://support.sas.com/kb/41/806.html
https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Enterprise-Guide/redirecting-sasuser-default-path/td-p/182239
But this will work only on the following SAS sessions, not the running one. I am not aware of a way to change those folders dynamically within the session itself. It is also probably not a good idea to do so (risk of corrupting system)
Edit: I just happen to believe to recall an ancient method I used in the past to modify session variables on the fly, but cannot recall the details. CLIST and TSO commands. Does it ring a bell? In any case, I would not use it careless without the right support if never used it before.
https://support.sas.com/kb/40/451.html
http://v8doc.sas.com/sashtml/os390/z1-hfs.htm
http://www.math.wpi.edu/saspdf/os390/1117c01.pdf
https://documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=hosto390&docsetTarget=p0m1fwogu1px51n16i7cfy7zugzk.htm&docse...
https://v8doc.sas.com/sashtml/os390/z0216812.htm
From the Infra point of view:
- the easiest solution would be to increase your HOME quota. It can be done on the fly, and with no impact for running sessions.
- it is also possible to extend the disks/volumes on the fly, but I do not think this is your issue.
- a good solution, but your admins need to be extremely careful with (and aligned with you), is to create symbolic links (symlinks) to the folder that is getting full, pointing to another location with enough space. It can be also be done on the fly, with a "but". The files must be fully in sync with the new location right before the creation of the symlink.
All in all, I think that your issue lies closer to your system administrators and service desk than to the SAS application itself, or SAS Technical Support. I also think that you need someone to review the requirements of your solution at least every year or two, to check if needs to be re-designed.
I loved the comparison of SAS to a car. Keep it maintained and you should be happy with it.
