When are temporary files deleted?

[albertsamaniego]

Hi we recently transitioned from PC Base SAS to SAS Studio.

I was just wondering whether the temporary data sets are deleted even when you close the browser tab or do I need to sign out for it to be deleted? I close the browser tab more often than signing out that my worry is that the temporary files are not deleted and might cause an out of disk space issue.

[saslove]

Did you mean temporary SAS datasets or code??

Usually, for me, temp SAS datasets wipes out clean when I reboot my computer. 

For code, it's when I exit SAS and reboot. 

[albertsamaniego]

What I mean is the SAS datasets on SAS Studio. Since this is a cloud-based application, I wonder if the best practice would be is just close the browser tab or sign out. I'm thinking that the temporary datasets are not erased if I just close the tab and might cause the server disk space to be full. We often encounter a SAS Studio outage due to a full disk and I'm not sure if the cause is the uncleared datasets.

[Tom · Accepted solution]

Best practice would be to signout so that SAS/Studio knows to shut down the session you are using, which will lead to the work directory being removed.

But your installation probably has a time out period set that will cause the orphaned session to ultimately be shutdown, so when you just leave eventually your work files will be deleted.

Also you can run scripts on your SAS server to have it clean any work directories that were not removed properly.

[CaseySmith]

Tom is correct.  If you sign out explicitly, SAS Studio has an opportunity to cleanup the workspace session (including any temporary data sets, ex. in WORK) immediately.  If you simply close your browser without explicitly signing out of SAS Studio, the workspace session will hang around until a timeout is reached (I believe 30 minutes by default), and then the session will be cleaned up.  So, the temporary data sets should be cleaned up either way.  Explicitly signing out just causes it to happen sooner.

Casey