Compress & Genmax option

[JJP1]

Hi ,
We are getting the alert like "There is increase in disk space issue for one of the path where SAS datasets are getting finally created and we do not
want this alert for increase space issue"

so i can see that the datasets which are created by the SAS programs are using some programs has compress=no and some programs as compress=yes option in code

would you please suggest is there any imporvemnet will happen on disk space alert if we change it to compress=no option
or compress=yes option in all affected SAS programs ?

would it really work.can i change it to compress=no then what would be the impact.if i change it to compress=yes then what would be the impact please
and some programs has no compress option itself.

Also we are using genmax option to take the backup of these datasets.

So if i want to get rid of this alert which way would be the best option please ?
is it reducing the limit of backup taken datasets
or
changing the compress option to NO/YES ?
or
Any other suggestions.please suggest

[nicobuettner]

Hi,

is that a SAS warning message or an OS alert?

Read about compress here:

https://go.documentation.sas.com/?cdcId=pgmsascdc&cdcVersion=9.4_3.5&docsetId=ledsoptsref&docsetTarg...

In general, compress=YES will compress repetitions of characters within strings, including blanks. This can lead to significant size reduction when the dataset has sparsely filled text variables (text in cell is only 20 characters long but length of variable is $50).

compress=BINARY will reduce dataset size when using many numeric variables.

[JJP1]

Thanks @nicobuettner 

it is not OS alert,but warning message.so we do not want to get the warning message whch is 97% got used by these datasets.

The Programs which are created these datasets has options compress =yes and option compress=no (both options are being used in same code which i did not undertsand).

would you please suggest how can i proceed further on this please

Also compress=yes option would be the best or reducing the backup of datasets taken to be best ?

whihc would be the good solution please

[nicobuettner]

Can you please post the exact warning message?

[JJP1]

Actually it is not exact SAS warning or any warning in any SAS job log @nicobuettner  .
but it is just alert got triggered to our mail box that "There is Increase in Disk Space for dataset path which is exceeding 97%."
So we are trying to reduce this disk space as it may impacts SAS performance generally.

please suggest on this how can i proceed further

[nicobuettner · Accepted solution]

Sorry, it is hard to help when I don't understand what is going on exactly.

It looks like you have implemented a custom process (shell script or SAS program or whatever) for the path you store datasets in that daily informs you by mail that your disk space for the location you store datasets in is exceeding 97%. I don't think this is an issue with SAS.

You just need to provide more disk space, compress more of your datasets (meaning setting compress=YES for more of your codes, because that will usually lead to less disk space being used) or change the genmax number to a smaller one (never used it but this should lead to storing less backups and thus decrease disk space consumption).

I cannot tell you what would be the best approach because I don't know your internal processes with ETL devOps.

Usually you should just increase the disk space because in the long-term you will probably run into the same issue again.