Output Directory in Batch Server properties

[jklaverstijn]

Hi Resa,

Just got back from SGF and a subsequent vacation in SW USA. Still buzzing from the jetlag and all the impressions.

I talked to several guys in the data management booth and they were all stumped. General advise was to raise the issue with tech support, which I will do asap.

Cheers Jan.

[jklaverstijn · Accepted solution]

So I talked about this at the Data Management booth in the Quad and a few eyebrows were raised but noone had the answer. So they suggested to open a track with tech Support which I did. And lo and behold the answer came swift and caused a facepalm moment for me.

The Output Directory property of the Data Step Batch server works in concert with the "Send the output to a file" option of the Schedule Manager in SMC. If you right-click on the Schedule Manager plugin you get access to that option. So if that option is checked and you have a location specified for the batch server than the -print option is added to the SAS command that is composed when deploying the job. Easy as that. I did not find any reference to this option in the online or in-app help. When naming the .lst file the "Prefix the SAS log file with the flow name" option is also honoured. Just no timestamps or anything so output files will be overwritten.

So finally the riddle is solved. Thanks for all chiming in and I hope we all learned something.

Regards,

- Jan.

[JuanS_OCS]

Hey Jan,

This question it turned out to be a much more difficult question to answer, than what you might expect.

Thanks a lot for the feedback, I just learned something good.

Best regards,

Juan

[PaulHomes]

Jan, thanks for posting your solution. I encountered this problem today (no permission to write .lst file to SASApp dir) and after spending some time tracking down the issue to a missing -print option on the SAS command line, I remembered this thread, used the solution you posted and it fixed it. SAS Communities rocks! 🙂

Makes me wonder if that SAS Management Console Schedule Manager option should be turned on by default.

BTW I found that I had to remove and re-add the job to the flow to get the -print option added. Did you have to do this too?

[jklaverstijn]

Hi Paul,

Great that you found this helpful. I did have a few small issues after finding out the solution. What you refer to, the command line of the deployed job not being refreshed, was one of them.

It is not needed to remove and re-add a job (with the consequence of loosing all dependencies and triggers as well) or even redeploy. In SMC, open the flow and then open the Properties of the job you're looking for. In the Scheduling Details pane there is a Refresh button underneath the command line field. That button is supposedly available if clicking it would make sense (!). And if it is and you click on it the command line will be updated to include the -print option.

Another issue we found is the extension of the print filename. By default this is the trusted .lst. But if you visit that setting in SMC (it's in the batch server properties) and leave it unchanged or reset it to .lst the result is that the extension is entirely removed from the filename. Only setting this to something non-standard like .list will make it stick. Very nasty little bug. In the end we resorted to some metadata trickery in a datastep to force the situation so it gives us .lst again.

I hope this will help you, Paul. i consider this a great opportunity to give something back where I have received so much from you.

Kind regards,

Jan.

[PaulHomes]

Thanks for those extra tips Jan - much appreciated!

Regarding the Reset button in the Scheduling Details tab, unfortunately it seems to be permanently greyed out for me. I was hoping that the change in Schedule Manager options would have been dynamically reflected in the command line, or that I could press that Reset button to trigger the update. Did you remember if you did anything special to enable it? I found the button wasn't enabled even after I toggled the Schedule Manager "Send the output to file" option. Not knowing what I had to do to get it enabled, I went with the remove and re-add the job technique. I was lucky in that the flow was very simple and so it was easy to do, but I definitely see what you mean about that approach being undesirable for more complex flows 🙂

Cheers

Paul

[jklaverstijn]

Hi Paul,

The trigger can be a change in the properties of the datastep batch server. But I also got the reset button enabled by changing the Output directory property. And the Output File Extension in the Advanced Options seems to have that effect. Sounfortunately I see the same effect of many asctionsd and cannot find the pattern. It's enabled more often than not. This is SAS 9.4M3.

Regards

- Jan.

[PaulHomes]

Thanks Jan.