Hi Again Mark,
I had a bit of a breakthrough with this so thought I would share.
When an enterprise guide program finishes it will add an icon for any datasets that have been edited to the process flow only as long as the libname is still assigned.
This means that if your macro writes data to a table and then clears the libname then that table won't be added to the process flow.
For my processes I had one program that wrote data to a new work table which I displayed to the user using proc report and then a separate program needed to pick up the generated table for further processing after the user had looked at the results screen. This hit several issues in that the work table was always added to the process flow since I couldn't unassign WORK meaning that the user could hack into and change the values in the table with no audit track of what was happening.
Since I didn't want to have to keep checking created/edited timestamps on tables the workaround i put in was in the form of the following macro.
This macro will create a new directory within in your saswork location assigned as _work. calling %m_sys_hiddenwork(assign) at the start of your program and %m_sys_hiddenwork(clear) at the end will give you a library that you can write data to that will not be visible from within you EG project but is available to any program that runs the macro. Added bonus is that when your session ends these temporary tables get cleaned up along with the rest of you SAS work data.
/* ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Program : m_sys_hiddenwork.sas
Created by: Tim Campbell
Created on: 03-Oct-2013
Purpose : Create a temporary library within the current sas work directory so
that temporary tables can be created in a way that does not cause
them to show up in enterprise guide.
Output : libname to new directory assigned or cleared based on parameter inputs.
Parameters :
NAME DESCRIPTION DEFAULT
-------------- --------------------------------------------- --------
in_assign Determines wheter the macro assigns or clears none (Required)
the libname reference.
in_dirname directory to store data in temp (Optional)
in_libref libref to use _work (Optional)
Requirements:
Macro variable sasworklocation defined to be a path on the server that the
user has write access to.
Code assumes that sasworklocaion defined as per enterprise guide definition
i.e. enclosed in single quotes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- */
%macro m_sys_hiddenwork(in_assign,in_dirname=temp,in_libref=_work);
/* check if sasworklocation macro variable exists */
%if not %symexist(sasworklocation) %then %do;
%put ERROR: sasworklocation macro variable not defined;
%return;
%end;
/* Assigning library */
%if %upcase(&in_assign) = ASSIGN %then %do;
data _null_;
newdir=dequote(&sasworklocation)||"&in_dirname";
/* attempt to create the directory */
Dir_rc=dcreate("&in_dirname",&sasworklocation);
if strip(Dir_rc) ne '' then do;
line="/*** New Directory "||strip(newdir)||" has been created. ***/";
putlog line;
end;
else do;
line="/*** Directory "||strip(newdir)||" already exists. ***/";
putlog line;
end;
/* assign filename to the directory and assign library */
rc=filename('chkdir', newdir);
if fexist('chkdir') then rc=libname("&in_libref", strip(newdir), 'base');
rc=filename('chkdir');
run;
%end;
/* clearing library */
%else %if %upcase(&in_assign) = CLEAR %then %do;
libname &in_libref clear;
%end;
%else %put ERROR: Unknown value for input parameter in_assign. Must be ASSIGN or CLEAR.;
%mend;
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