option FMTSEARCH and Autoexec

[jchang53]

Hi, does anyone know about the options FMTSEARCH enough to help me understand if the following situation is possible? 

Currently, I have this line in my autoexec.sas:

options FMTSEARCH=(Formats.TQFormats SASUser.Formats); 

The Formats.TQFormats is a format catalog I made with proc format. It is the main place I get my formats from (located on a shareable Network). SASUser.Formats contains an identical copy of the formats stored in the TQFormats catalog. SASUser is meant to act as a back up copy of our formats in case our Network goes down. 

My main question is: In the event the network goes down after having opened my EG and having run the above FMTSEARCH option, is there a way my computer can automatically access the formats located in SASUser without having to re-run the FMTSEARCH option? Basically, I'm asking if it's possible for SAS to have a "memory" of the formats in both catalogs instead of only the formats in the first catalog where if the first catalog is inaccessible, SAS will use the formats in the next available SAS catalog? Again, the formats in both catalogs are identical. 

I have looked through the FMTSEARCH documentation and found nothing regarding this issue. 

For reference I am using version 7.15 HF7 of SAS Enterprise Guide and 9.04.01M5P091317 of SAS.

[Cynthia_sas]

Hi:
But if your network is down, your network is down. Is SASUSER local (on your C: drive) -- sometimes in EG installations SASUSER is on the same server where SAS is located. It seems to me this all might be problematic if the network is down.

Just my .02,
Cynthia

[jchang53]

SASUser is located on my C: drive. It should be accessible even if our network (I: Drive) is down. 

[ChrisBrooks]

I'm puzzled - because you have both Formats.TQFormats and SASUser.Formats in your FMTSEARCH path this will automatically happen  as if SAS can't find Formats.TQFormats it should automatically search SASUser.Formats and if the formats are identical there's no problem.....

[jchang53]

Hi Chris, SAS does not automatically search SASUser.Formats if the Formats.TQFormats catalog is inaccessible. I actually tested it by manually disabling the network, and when I try to apply a format that I know is in both catalogs, I got this error message:

ERROR:  Windows error code: 64 in hc_disk_open for I:\Formats\tqformats.sas7bcat, The specified network name is no longer available.

[ballardw]

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@jchang53 wrote:

Hi, does anyone know about the options FMTSEARCH enough to help me understand if the following situation is possible? 

Currently, I have this line in my autoexec.sas:

options FMTSEARCH=(Formats.TQFormats SASUser.Formats); 

The Formats.TQFormats is a format catalog I made with proc format. It is the main place I get my formats from (located on a shareable Network). SASUser.Formats contains an identical copy of the formats stored in the TQFormats catalog. SASUser is meant to act as a back up copy of our formats in case our Network goes down. 

My main question is: In the event the network goes down after having opened my EG and having run the above FMTSEARCH option, is there a way my computer can automatically access the formats located in SASUser without having to re-run the FMTSEARCH option? Basically, I'm asking if it's possible for SAS to have a "memory" of the formats in both catalogs instead of only the formats in the first catalog where if the first catalog is inaccessible, SAS will use the formats in the next available SAS catalog? Again, the formats in both catalogs are identical. 

I have looked through the FMTSEARCH documentation and found nothing regarding this issue. 

For reference I am using version 7.15 HF7 of SAS Enterprise Guide and 9.04.01M5P091317 of SAS.

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Preface: I don't work in an EG environment so I can't test this.

My understanding is that FMTSEARCH depends on the availability of the Library and the associated format catalog. You can assign libraries to fmtsearch when the library doesn't exist. The option controls the search order when SAS goes looking for a format reference. If the library exists it is searched in the specified order. So the actual issue I think is: are the libraries available?

If the libraries require network access and the server then the option would have issues until the library connections are reestablished.

[jchang53]

Ballardw, thanks for your post. We are on the same page as I understand that a format catalog's formats are dependent on accessibility to the network it's on. My question is if there are two format catalogs (one located on a network, the other on the local C:/drive), in the event that the primary format catalog (located on the network) becomes inaccessible, is there a way for SAS to automatically use the formats from the second format catalog (located on the local C:/drive). Currently, I am unable to achieve this without having to re-run the options FMTSEARCH option with the order of the format catalogs reversed: 

options FMTSEARCH=(SASUser Formats.TQFormats);

[ballardw]

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@jchang53 wrote:

Ballardw, thanks for your post. We are on the same page as I understand that a format catalog's formats are dependent on accessibility to the network it's on. My question is if there are two format catalogs (one located on a network, the other on the local C:/drive), in the event that the primary format catalog (located on the network) becomes inaccessible, is there a way for SAS to automatically use the formats from the second format catalog (located on the local C:/drive). Currently, I am unable to achieve this without having to re-run the options FMTSEARCH option with the order of the format catalogs reversed: 

options FMTSEARCH=(SASUser Formats.TQFormats);

---

We see enough questions about accessing local data from an EG server that I'm not sure I can understand how your EG server is seeing your hard drive to map a library on C:;

Can you show the result of running: this snippet:

libname sasuser list;

The log should show the path actually being used for the SASUSER library.

Or is the FORMATS library you are attempting to use on yet another server where the network connection may fail.

[jchang53]

NOTE: Writing TAGSETS.SASREPORT13(EGSR) Body file: EGSR
24         
25         GOPTIONS ACCESSIBLE;
26         libname sasuser list;
NOTE: Libref=   SASUSER 
      Scope=    Kernel  
      Engine=   V9
      Physical Name= C:\Users\jchang\Documents\My SAS Files\9.4
      Filename= C:\Users\jchang\Documents\My SAS Files\9.4
      Owner Name= FACS_ORG\jchang
      File Size=              4KB
      File Size (bytes)= 4096

 Yes, as mentioned above, the FORMATS.TQFormats catalog is located on a network (I:/drive) that can fail. The SASUser format catalog is located on the C:/drive so that I can access the formats in the event that the network fails.

[ballardw]

If EG doesn't find the local format catalog when the remote is unavailable I would be looking for some setting peculiar to EG.

This assumes that one or more formats you are attempting use are all in the local format catalog.

What exactly are your symptoms?