While You Were Sleeping…
SAS Is Hard At Work
Andrea WainwrightZimmerman
Overview
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Bomb-Proof The Code
Handle Any Errors
Store The Log
Confirm Success
Determine Possible Scenarios
Schedule Code To Run
Bomb-Proof The Code
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Any SAS code that you plan to schedule
needs to be as error free as possible.
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No syntax errors
Run many time through all possible scenarios
without errors or issues
Handle Any Errors
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No matter how well written the code, there still may
be unavoidable errors.
Where in the code can they happen? What methods
can be used to catch these errors? How should they
be handled?
Examples:
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Bad data provided
Database is down
Password has expired
Handle Any Errors - Bad Data
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Determine what types of bad data are possible.
Code logic to catch such issues.
Send notification of the data issue.
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Both to you and the data provider if possible
Provide noticeable, clear subject line
Determine what useful details to include in the body
Skip over sections of code that shouldn’t (or won’t)
run on the bad data.
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GOTO and LINK are helpful
If no more code is needed ENDSAS is an option
Handle Any Errors - Database Issue
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To capture an issue with the connection to a database, use the
following %check libname macro immediately after the libname
statement
%macro check_libname;
%if &sysdbrc ne 0 %then %do;
%send_email(subj=LIBNAME FAIL
,text=%superq(sysdbmsg))
endsas;
%end;
%mend;
Store The Log
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No matter how well you write the code, and no
matter how well you plan for all possible issues,
there still is a chance of failure.
In these cases you’ll need to review the log to see
what happened.
proc printto log="C:\My Documents\
project\log_&sysdate..log" new;
run;
Confirm Successes
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At certain points in the process you will want
to be notified of successes.
If there is a macro that loops e-mails notifying
you of the success of step X of Y can be
helpful in catching anomalies.
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For example, if you get a message about 2 of 2
but never got a message about 1 of 2, you’ll want
to review the log.
Confirm Successes - Send_Email
%macro send_email
( to= &my_e_mail
, from=&my_e_mail
, subj=
, cc= &my_e_mail
, text=
);
filename sendmail
email;
data _null_;
file sendmail;
put '!EM_TO!' "&to";
put '!EM_FROM!' "&from";
put '!EM_CC!' "&cc";
put '!EM_SUBJECT!' "&subj";
body="&text";
put body;
run;
%mend;
Confirm Successes - Outlook Issues
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Outlook will want to know if you really want
the e-mail sent.
This defeats the purpose of having the code
run overnight and report on it’s progress.
There are a few options to handles this.
Confirm Successes - Outlook Issues
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This is an optional Outlook behavior that can
be turned off if you have the permissions or can
influence those that do.
There are free programs available on-line that
will simply “Click Yes” for you that you can
install if you have the permissions.
You can edit the SAS CFG file to use SMTP
instead.
See http://support.sas.com/kb/19/767.html for
details.
Determine Possible Scenarios
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Will the code always produce something?
Will there always be something the code
needs to do?
Are there iterative loops (macros) that
notification would be beneficial for?
Don’t leave yourself wondering what
happened.
Determine Possible Scenarios
Failure E-mail
End
No
Start
No New Data Email
End
No
Able to
Connect to
dB?
Yes
Failure E-mail
No
Is There New
Data?
Yes
Data Correct?
Yes
Determine How
Many Iterations
End
Completion E-mail
Yes
Done All
Iterations?
E-mail X of Y
No
Run Macro
End
Schedule Code To Run
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Does this code need to run on a repeating
schedule or do you just want it to run after
hours?
To run SAS after hours, use the SLEEP
function.
For repeating running, each environment has
it’s own scheduling tool.
For Windows, there is the Scheduled Task.
Schedule Code To Run - Sleep
To SLEEP till a specific start time:
data _null_;
now=datetime();
start=’25JUN2010:19:00:00'dt;
wait_sec=start-now;
zzz=sleep(wait_sec);
run;
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Schedule Code To Run - Sleep
To SLEEP for a set amount of time:
data _null_;
hour=5;
min=30;
wait_sec=(60*60*hour)+(60*min);
zzz=sleep(wait_sec);
run;
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Questions?
Andrea Wainwright-Zimmerman
andrea.zimmerman@capitalone.com