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Add a DESC= to allow user-coded description value to as many "proc-level" (i.e. DATA step, PROC xxxxx, possibly ODS ) statements as possible.   Add an option to add this descriptor to some SASLOG messages such as at the end of DATA or PROC when showing CPU use.

z/OS specific, add this value to the SAS SMF record.

The intent is to allow "grouping" of pieces of a program, to easier identify the parts that error messages come from, or analysis of resources used,  with a value of meaning to the user. Such as "summarization and redistribution of sales by region"  which might consist of many different DATA and PROC actions but be one logical piece to the user.

11 Comments
TimH
Quartz | Level 8

Putting comments in the SAS log is not what I am after.   PROC PRINTTO isn't it, either.   The SAS Application Response Monitor (which someone pointed me to and I haven't completely digested yet) _might_ have a similar capability. 

This isn't about identifying the "sections" of my SAS program in the log for human readability.  This is about identifying the sections of the program in any external facility that logs the execution of the code along with resources used such as CPU time, elapsed time, Memory use, I/O counts, etcetera.  It's to aid someone, who needs to improve the execution of their  SAS application, to determine in which sections of their application would benefit the most from improvement.

I used IBM's System Measurement Facility as my example because that's what I use and because SAS on the z/OS platform can record usage information to SMF.   I would much prefer that, but I would not be opposed to a SAS-based facility as long as I am able to have some higher-level "descriptor" associated and not just receive the DATA steps and PROC names in the log with no way to determine _which_ ones in my programs they were.