Lock is not available in Work library Datasets in SAS 9.3 on Windows environment

[SaugataM]

Hi,
I am getting an intermittent error of "A lock is not available on Work.XXXXX". The dataset name changes and not always I get this error. But invariably once or twice a day I will get this problem and it is always on the datasets of Work library.
I have already opened a communication with the server infra team to check whether any 3rd party tool is accessing these files (like backup, scan etc.).

I have also checked the options like FILELOCKWAIT to make sure that instead of failing instantaneously, the system waits for some time to get the lock. But since I am using SAS 9.3; the FILELOCKWAIT system option is not available to me and the LIBNAME option does not work for WORK library.

I am looking for:
1) Either a way to identify the process that is creating this lock in Windows environment.
2) Or, a feasible way (since it can be any of the work dataset, using a trylock type macro for all the datasets is very difficult to implement) to make the system wait for n seconds before throwing the error.

Thanks a lot for your time.

[yabwon]

Hi @SaugataM ,

did you test the LOCK statement:

https://documentation.sas.com/?cdcId=pgmsascdc&cdcVersion=9.4_3.4&docsetId=lestmtsglobal&docsetTarge...

?

All the best

Bart

[r_behata]

Here is a use case for the Lock statement.

http://support.sas.com/kb/51/275.html

Use the %trylock macro in a conflicting process  which waits for the other process till either it releases the lock on the dataset or until a configurable time period.

Here is the command to unlock the dataset once the processing is done since the macro explicitly locks the dataset, it is safe to clear the lock once the processing is done.

lock rcli_.rcli_control_master clear;

[SaugataM]

Thanks a lot for your reply.

Since I have hundreds of datasets getting created in the work library. Encasing all of them in a trylock macro in an already deployed product is going to be very tough, if not impossible.

That is why I am looking for a system or library wise option.

[SASKiwi]

Please confirm with your server team that this drive is NOT being backed up and hence there should be no third-party tools locking files. There is absolutely no need to backup SAS work drives.