SAS EG dataset very slow to load, 5-10 second lag

[RobertWF1]

It often takes 5-10 seconds to open SAS datasets to inspect my data, and there's a similar lag scrolling through records.

Are there any tricks to expedite visual inspection of data?

[SASKiwi · Accepted solution]

What version of EG are you using? Are you using a remote SAS server or not? Is it always slow or only sometimes? Any lag on opening a SAS dataset to view depends on the network performance between your PC and the remote SAS server. Is it faster outside normal business hours? If so you can be pretty guaranteed that it is a slow network causing the problem.

EDIT: I'd recommend upgrading to the latest version of EG also, 8.3, Update 5. Typical opening time for me is 1 to 2 seconds.

[RobertWF1]

Thank you - we're using SAS EG 7.1 (64 bit), connecting via a remote server.

I think the best option is to print the first 100 or 1,000 rows to an Excel spreadsheet, which I can then keep open.

[kevin_stanford]

I don't think this addresses the problem. We've been running 7.13 successfully for a few years and only recently have I experienced this lag, which can be upwards of 20 seconds or more. OTOH, one of the big reasons we haven't rolled out v8 is because it's had the same lag ever since we started testing it, what, two or three years ago?

[SASKiwi]

In my experience most performance problems with EG are caused by slow network connections. Working remotely from home over VPNs can be problematic as it slows everything down, not just EG to SAS server connections. Working over an office LAN is much faster.

EG 8.3, the latest version, works well for us and appears to perform better than 8.1. Have you tested that? Turning off automatic dataset opening in EG can improve program performance significantly. 

[kevin_stanford]

I don't think this is a network problem. It only happens when there's a lag between when the dataset was created and when it was opened. The data have already been transmitted through the network, yet the lag referred to in the subject line is more like 20-30 seconds.

I'm wondering if this might be something like a caching issue. Is EG not making a local copy of what it's bring to my local system from the server?

[SASKiwi]

EG doesn't bring remote SAS server data down to your local PC when viewing data. It's a thin-client app that just does screen handling. When I open a 500,000 row table it is only marginally slower than opening a 20 row table - less than 2 seconds. If it was copying the actual data it would be hugely slower. Where are your remote SAS servers located? Ours are 800km (500 miles) from our location. The more remote your SAS servers are the slower they are going to respond to your view table requests. Do you work in an office using an intranet or are you remoting from home over VPN? These factors can hugely impact performance.

[kevin_stanford]

Latency due to distance, etc. Yeah. Our server is on prem.

Here's the thing: until about a year ago, we saw EG version-dependent behavior wrt to time to open a data set.

• v7x opened everything more or less immediately
• v8x had this 20+ second lag

They were both pulling data from the same SAS server, over the same network. Why were / are we running both? Because EG v8x is so painfully slow to open data sets!

Fast forward to now, when suddenly EG v7x is now experiencing the same data slowdown as we've always seen with v8x. The "advantage" that v7x was providing for us is now gone.

And I want to know where it went.

🙂

[SASKiwi]

It's at this point that I suggest you open a track with SAS Tech Support to investigate further. The behaviour you are seeing suggests some site-specific issue that may likely require further diagnosing by turning on EG logging and providing these logs to SAS. Feel free to update your findings here.

[kevin_stanford]

follow up: v7 performance was a one-off and returned to normal.

v8 performance continues to lag. There are numerous "helpful" suggestions on this board pointing at network latency, etc., but the facts are as follows:

v7x: no lag

v8x: lag

pulling the process logs reveals that the client can take 10-20 seconds to connect to the server. and it disconnects from the server frequently for what i can only assume are performance "benefits".

well, maybe someone can tell me how to override the system so that my client maintains a constant connection to the (linux) server (thereby causing a different sort of performance problem)?

i've seen too many other posts here about v8 lagging to believe this is an isolated problem, and none of them have useful solutions attached to them.

SAS Enterprise Guide 8.1 is Lagging - SAS Support Communities

Regular Performance Issues in SAS Enterprise Guide - SAS Support Communities

[MarkAllemang]

Hi @kevin_stanford - I understand you are frustrated with the lags you are experiencing with EG 8.  Did you open a tech support track? If you do that, and provide tech support with logs for an EG session that shows the lag, I will be able to analyze the log to see if I can determine the cause of the delays.

It is best if a matching set of an EG log and the corresponding Workspace Server log are included.

After the track is opened, I will take a look at the logs.

Mark Allemang

[ToreB]

Late response on this. (Like the EG issue...) But anyway.
It seems that memory can be an issue, even I don't know wich..
We have lot of data on SQL Server that we often open in SAS EG. It seems to me that a very limited amount of rows are read if the table contain lot of columns. More rows are loaded on 'slim' tables.
Forthermore it seems that a new database read is performed after each 'scroll latency'.
Why? I don't know. Quite annoying for end users. E.g. Excel is fast in comparison.
Is it possible to 'tell' sas to continue read more data in the background when viewing, or is it a config setting that is the root cause.