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It would be nice to have a feature in EG that allows you to skip the current data step/procedure while SAS is running entire projects/programs.

 

Reason being, a certain step might be taking long to run and the results of which don't affect the data steps that follow, so this feature would allow you to skip the current step/procedure and move on with the project/program.

 

Currently you would have to stop the entire run process, comment out the irrelevant data step(s) and start the run from the beginning again - especially in cases when datasets are being overwritten constantly, as in these cases you have no choice but to run the entire project again from the start if you decide to stop the run mid-way.

5 Comments
ChrisHemedinger
Community Manager

Some things that you can do today:

  • Create an Ordered List of tasks that you want to run, bypassing the sequence that is specified in the process flow.  So you could just have a named list of those tasks that you want to iterate through frequently, skipping the "expensive" steps that you need to run only once.
  • Use a Condition (right-click on a node, select Condition) to skip/stop at a specific task in the flow.  You can have the condition pinned to a SAS macro variable, which you could define in another program node as needed.
  • Right-click on any node and select Run Branch from here, which will run the remainder of the connected nodes to the right side of the selected nodes (including the one you select).

None of these are exactly your idea, but I think that they can probably be used to accomplish your goal.

MJKhusal
Fluorite | Level 6

Thanks for the speedy response Chris!

 

Will definitely give Conditions and Ordered Lists a try.

 

This seems to still require some prep beforehand though(?), whereas I'm looking more for an "after-the-run-started" solution where certain data steps within programs can be skipped if they are taking too long to run.

 

We have a lot of communal code that we share within the organisation, as well as code that get read in with "%include" statements, so you dont necessarily have direct access to change the code. And sometimes you only find out which steps are "expensive" once they have actually started running - and its only at this point you question whether you need to run the step or not 🙂

ChrisHemedinger
Community Manager

The Project Reviewer task (custom task) can help you to report on the expensive steps.  If you have that built into your project and it has been run at least once, you can get a sense for the "resource hogs" before you start again.

MJKhusal
Fluorite | Level 6

Thanks, thats quite a nifty little tool. Run times can vary drastically though when running on servers that have load capacity beyond the user's control.

 

Still think that a simple button to skip a step during a run would be useful in those situations. Statements can even be written to the log to indicate which steps were skipped by the user.

BeverlyBrown
Community Manager
Status changed to: Not Planned