Multiple SAS sessions with one user account - WORK library conflict?

[paul_e]

Hello,

consider the case that I open two instances of my SAS client and connect to a SAS 9.4 server with the same user credentials. Will the temporary WORK libraries in these two sessions refer to the same physical location and hence share the same members of these libraries? Or will SAS keep the two libraries separate by providing separate locations?

[PaigeMiller]

The work libraries are in separate locations.

[doug_sas · Accepted solution]

Every SAS process gets its own SASWORK directory.

[Kurt_Bremser]

As already said, you won't have a conflict with your WORK; you will also not be able to exchange data through the WORK libraries, you need separate "permanent" libraries for this.

But you might find NOTEs in your logs about conflict with regards to the SASUSER library, if that is not set to read-only in your SAS environment. These NOTEs can be safely ignored.

[PaigeMiller]

But you can turn the separate WORK libraries into "permanent" libraries with the proper LIBNAME statement, and then access another session's WORK library this way (if you need to do that). They're not really permanent, hence the quotes, they will disappear when you shut down the session. If you need these data sets to exist after the session shuts down, then you truly need a permanent library.