46 Comments

1. Pingback: Enterprise Guide 4.3.1 and 9.3 Stored Processes - Real BI for Real Users

2. 

   Nikos on December 26, 2011 3:30 am

   Hi,

   I am using SAS EG 4.3 on a server. I need to import several csv files that are residing on a server.
   Each month a new csv file will be added to the existing ones.

   I would like to create a macro that will identify the number of csv files, import them to SAS EG 4.3 and finally concatenate them in one master SAS data set.

   I believe that PIPE do not work with SAS EG.

   I would very much appreciate your help.

   Kind regards

   Nikos
3. 

   Wagner on April 20, 2012 1:41 pm

   Chris.

   Maybe a "tip" to the Guide's guys...

   For me, isn't so easy to upgrade to Guide 4.3. I had a 9.2 TS2M2 release and use "SAS Roles" in SAS Management Console. Because of this release, the roles works well only to Guide 4.2. The 4.3 version ignore the roles...

   I did a test in another env, where a 9.2TS2M3 release is installed. In this case, the roles works only for Guide 4.3...
   • 

     Chris Hemedinger on April 20, 2012 1:43 pm

     Yes, the role metadata is version-specific. I believe that tech support can help you to get additional EG versions registered in metadata, but it's a manual process and not facilitated by the software deployment tools.
4. 

   candice on October 24, 2012 8:56 am

   chris~
   i work on sas enterprise guide 5.1, and can i use enterpirse guide 4.3 to open it? and does it work?

   thx~
   • 

     Chris Hemedinger on October 24, 2012 1:00 pm

     No, EG 4.3 cannot open a 5.1 project. In general, earlier versions of Enterprise Guide cannot open project documents from later versions.
5. 

   sri on October 26, 2012 6:55 pm

   A connection could not be made to the SAS Metadata Server but is required for the current operation. Please see your administrator.

   Whats the solution
   • 

     Chris Hemedinger on October 29, 2012 8:27 am

     Sri, this could be any of a number of causes - network issue, credentials problem, or others. I advise contacting SAS Technical Support or else your local SAS administrator, if you have one.
6. 

   Philip Coltharp on November 28, 2012 2:12 pm

   I am working with a new installation of SAS EG 5.1. I've noticed that in my installation of EG, when I view a dataset, my installation only has the Data>Append Table as the only available "action" for the data set (or any dataset). Where my EG 4.3, and my work mate's EG 5.1, has 15 more avaiable actions under Data plus actions under "Describe", "Graph" and "Analyze". Is there a quick fix to this? If I need to put a help ticket, how might I describe this problem to make it more clear to the those whom will respond to it?
   • 

     Chris Hemedinger on November 28, 2012 3:04 pm

     Philip,

     It sounds like there might be an installation problem where EG is not seeing your tasks.
     Try the steps that are described in this SAS Note: http://support.sas.com/kb/46/230.html.
     • 

       Philip Coltharp on December 4, 2012 9:52 am

       That was easier than I expected. thanks
       • 

         Aanchal Nandwani on May 21, 2020 6:47 am

         Hi,

         I am a SAS administrator and new in this domain.We are using SAS 9.3 and Enterprise Guide. 5.1.
         My users are not able to save their Guide projects in their local system but only in the SAS Folders.

         Could you tell me what permission need to be changed and where so that they are able to save their projects locally as well

         Thanks in advance
         • 

           Chris Hemedinger on May 21, 2020 7:35 am

           The only two reasons that I can think of for this:

           1. You have roles/capabilities restricted for users in the SAS Metadata Server. It is possible to disable "save local files" with this feature, but personally I don't advise it.
           2. Or, your users are accessing SAS Enterprise Guide via a terminal server like Citrix or remote desktop, and don't have access from EG to their local system.

           If you can't resolve it, I suggest contacting SAS Technical Support. Also -- as I'm sure you're aware -- SAS 9.3 and EG 5.1 are old versions (released in 2012). Even if you can't update your version of SAS, you can use a later version of SAS Enterprise Guide. SAS Enterprise Guide v8.2 can work with SAS 9.3.
7. 

   Jon Walker on December 28, 2012 9:30 am

   SAS 9.3 automatically converts illegal characters in variable names to an underscore when importing from an SQL database, when I run the same SAS code in EG 5.1 it fails due apparently to 5.1 not converting those characters. Is there some way around this issue?
   • 

     Chris Hemedinger on December 28, 2012 12:41 pm

     Try including:
     

     options validvarname=v7;
     

     
     before your program. See this post for more information about the types of options that EG submits by default.
     • 

       Jon Walker on December 31, 2012 12:24 pm

       That fixed it. Thanks.
8. 

   Peter McKimm on January 24, 2013 5:18 pm

   Hi Chris,

   We have installed SAS 9.3 on a new server, but we also have other older servers that still run SAS 9.2 and SAS 9.1.3. Most users *(like me) have EGuide 4.1 and 4.3 installed on their PCs. However, even though EGuide 5.1 has been tested in isolation and is working fine, when technology added EGuide 5.1 to my PC as a pilot test, all 3 EGuides stopped working.

   When launching EGuide 5.1 it comes up with "Fatal error : CLR error: 80004005"
   EGuide 4.3 says "Attempted to read or write protected memory"
   EGuide 4.1 comes up with some Common Language Runtime Error.

   Can you please tell me if all 3 EGuide versions can peacefully coexist (we run Windows XP on our PCs)
   • 

     Chris Hemedinger on January 24, 2013 5:42 pm

     Peter,

     All three versions of EG can coexist on one machine.

     The error you see indicates a problem with the .NET runtime. EG 4.1 uses .NET 1.1, 4.3 uses .NET 3.5, and 5.1 uses .NET 4.0. Each version of EG is "pinned" to a specific runtime version, so you need all 3 runtimes in order for all versions of EG to work on one machine. I suggest installing/repairing each of those .NET runtime packages to see if that helps.
     • 

       Peter McKimm on January 28, 2013 8:04 pm

       Thanks Chris, I think we are getting close, all 3 versions have been installed to a fresh machine and 4.3 and 5.1 work fine. 4.1 worked fine until we installed the other 2, now 4.1 gets the following error ....

       System.IO.FileNotFoundException
       File or assembly name SAS.OCT.OlapClientEngine, or one of its dependencies, was not found.

       In EGuide 4.1 the dll file is located in C:\Program Files\SAS\Enterprise Guide 4\Shared Files\BIClientOLAP\1.3
       In EGuide 4.3 the dll file is located in C:\Program Files\SAS\EnterpriseGuide\4.3
       In EGuide 5.1 the dll file is located in C:\Program Files\SAS\SASEnterpriseGuide\5.1

       If I copy the SAS.OCT.OlapClientEngine from C:\Program Files\SAS\Enterprise Guide 4\Shared Files\BIClientOLAP\1.3 to C:\Program Files\SAS\Enterprise Guide 4 then it works so it seems some path variable is getting overwritten when I install the other 2 EGuides.

       Do you know what could be causing this?
       • 

         Chris Hemedinger on January 29, 2013 10:30 am

         Peter, it could be that there is a bit of confusion with the SAS/SharedFiles location. There should be only one official "SharedFiles" location per machine, shared among the different versions of SAS and EG. But it's possible that during installation of one of the apps that a "rogue" SharedFiles location was created and now EG 4.1 can't find it.

         How to fix? Well, you could do what you've done with the manual copy of the files, but that may be difficult to maintain. You might need to relocate BIClientOLAP\1.3 (and some other stuff) to where EG thinks the current shared files location is. The Windows Registry may give a clue. Look at the value of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SAS Institute Inc.\Common Data\Shared Files (on 64-bit Windows, that's HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\SAS Institute Inc.\Common Data\Shared Files).
9. 

   Stephen Michael on April 10, 2013 9:45 am

   HI Chris.

   I have this simple Proc Import that I am using in SAS 9.3, but when it takes the text file and makes it a SAS table, it truncates two of the columns to a length of 28 when there are definitely records in these columns of more than 28. Why would this occur? Is this a SAS 9.3 thing as I have run this SAS query many times before using SAS 9.2 and never had this issue.

   Here is the code:

   PROC IMPORT OUT= BOB.MASTER_CUST
   DATAFILE= "S:\fi_dept\Shr\BOB\SAS\GROUPS\MASTER_CUST.txt"
   DBMS = TAB REPLACE;
   RUN;

   Thank you!
   • 

     Chris Hemedinger on April 10, 2013 10:06 am

     Stephen, it might be that PROC IMPORT decides on the length before it encounters the longer fields. See the GUESSINGROWS= option to adjust this behavior.
10. 

    zoey on May 20, 2013 4:36 am

    I'm using SAS EG 4. My friend send a project which being save using SAS 5.1. However, I'm unable to open it using SAS EG4. Is there any way I can fix it?
    • 

      Chris Hemedinger on May 20, 2013 9:06 am

      Sorry, no. EG projects are not backward compatible with earlier versions of EG. Any release of EG can open projects made with a previous release, but not vice versa.
11. 

    Tejas Joshi on August 12, 2013 2:32 am

    I am have SAS EG projects created in SAS EG 5.1 version. My client machine is having SAS EG 4.3 version. When I try to open the .egp project in SAS eg 4.3 version I get the message "Unable to open the file . The project version not supported or file is from a later version" . Is there any way I can fix it ?
    • 

      Chris Hemedinger on August 12, 2013 8:57 am

      No, later versions of EG projects are not readable by earlier versions. The only solution is to install EG 5.1 on your client machine. You can have multiple versions of EG on the same machine, so you can keep 4.3 along with 5.1 if you need to make that transition.
      • 

        chiti agarwal on December 9, 2016 9:37 pm

        i am having the same problem. the weird thing is it was working when i installed it but after A week its giving this problem.i dont know the solution.
        • 

          Chris Hemedinger on December 11, 2016 12:49 pm

          Chiti, are you saying that you were able to open EG 5.1 projects in 4.3? That doesn't sound correct. If you had both EG 4.3 and 5.1 installed (supported), then maybe you were using one version and not the other without realizing it.
12. 

    Hal on September 9, 2013 3:49 pm

    Chris;
    I'm running EG 4.3 in a SAS 9.2 environment. If I write a program and want to save it on the server, we have this option named $FPATH which only allows directories from our primary assigned group to be displayed as a place to store the program. I'm on an IBM P770 AIX 7.1 box. I think the option is set in restricted options, I may be wrong. Is there a way to have someone's $FPATH show more than one set of directories based on the number of groups associated with their UNIX user ID??? Otherwise, I've very limited to where I can store my program. Thanks in advance!
    • 

      Chris Hemedinger on September 9, 2013 4:24 pm

      Hal,

      The restricted option controls the starting root where you can navigate the server file system. It's a single directory, as you know. Your admins probably have it set during a startup script, and the exact path depends on your group membership. But only one path can be specified as the root.

      However, you might be able to access the other directories by adding symbolic links (using AIX shell commands) from your "allowed" path to the other paths that you also want to access.
13. 

    Ian on December 23, 2013 6:39 am

    Hi.
    Some of my users are getting: A connection could not be made to the SAS Metadata Server but is required for the current operation. Please see your administrator.
    The users re setup correctly and have all the required access to servers? They were abel to use EG up to a few days ago. This is not affecting all users.
    • 

      Chris Hemedinger on December 24, 2013 10:00 am

      Ian,

      You might have the affected users try the ITConfig tool (installed with the Integration Technologies client) to test their connections to the metadata server. If you need more guidance on this, open a track with SAS Technical Support.
14. 

    Dominic Roy on February 21, 2014 12:25 pm

    I have many EG projects that are running similarly on different data. I want to introduce a new section in each project.

    When I was working with conventional SAS programs, I used a comparison tool. I introduced my sections in my model and tested it. When fine, I used a comparison tool to identify the difference between old program and the new model and with the tool, I was able to copy all the sections to the programs that didn't have those sections.

    I don't see any equivalent tool in EG for programs that are stored in the EG projects. It would be nice to also be able to compare some process flows, data and logs. It is very combersome to compare visually the projects.

    Is there a way to open an EG project with an XML tool. We also used to work with SAS programs stored in SAS catalogs. This is no more available in EG. Using SCL, we were able to convert those catalog program in SAS tables and then we were able to scan and compare the code. It there a way to read an EG project and to convert it in a searchable and comparable format?

    Thanks.
    • 

      Chris Hemedinger on February 24, 2014 8:56 am

      Dominic,

      You can search/compare content from EG projects in two ways.

      1. Use the EGP Search tool that I've shared here. This allows you to search for occurrences of text patterns across different projects.

      2. Use the automation API to extract all programs (and logs, if needed) to an external folder and then use your favorite file comparison tools. Here is a specific example that extracts all programs.
15. 

    Dominic Roy on February 21, 2014 12:45 pm

    We are using EG as a programmer tool. We are looking at the same habits as we had with Base SAS. We know this is different, but it is lacking some functionalies that were so useful. We try to cope without them. Maybe SAS could help.

    For example, we used to define a filename SASPGM pointing to the Windows folder SASPGM that contained all our programs. When we needed the program, we just typed
    %include SASPGM(ExtractData.SAS);

    We still can do that within EG, but what we need is that the project (or the process flow) to use this way of addressing the programs. It is a logical addressing instead of a physical addressing. It doesn't seem useful at the first glance, but it is crucial in development, testing and production environments.

    What is also lacking is a filename list in the server tree. We already have a libname list and a folder list. We used to have an extensive use of folder filenames. This is great when you have undetermined raw data files that are stored in a Windows folder or when you want to put your HTML results in a Windows folder.

    Thanks.
    • 

      Chris Hemedinger on February 24, 2014 9:02 am

      Dominic,

      EG doesn't support the ability to reference programs via SAS fileref "folder". But it does support the idea of relative paths for file program references. I've described that in this blog post about using source control management.

      As far as a view of filenames, I agree that this is a useful feature that's missing. It would be possible for us to create a custom task (similar to the catalog explorer) that shows this. Do you think that would help?
16. 

    Vinayak Alwal on August 12, 2014 7:41 am

    I want to build query for the fixing the length of the column in required length format. E.g the Customer name is "Stephen" only - Stephen is 07 the digit of lenth but customer name column is required in 40 digit of length including in blanks spaces... and if the column is empty eventhough column should be in required 40 length of the column. If more than the 40 character then system only pic the starting 40 characters.

    Another query is required in numerical field where the numerical value is 05 digit of length(length is flutucate any time) only but I require the column in required 13 digit of length with starting digit to be fill with 0's. E.g value in column "1000" but output should require in "0000000001000"

    Please help to how build this query in SAS EBI 4.3 version
    • 

      Chris Hemedinger on August 12, 2014 8:13 am

      Vinayak,

      Wow -- very specific needs!

      For the first case, you can use the TRIM() or COMPRESS() function to modify the column you're comparing against so that the padding spaces don't play into the query. For example:
      

      WHERE TRIM(t1.CustomerName) = "Stephen"
      /* or, to account for case differences */
      WHERE UPPER(TRIM(t1.CustomerName)) = "STEPHEN"
      

      For the second case, you can use the Zw. format to add leading zeros to an output. Example:
      

      SELECT OutNumber as t1.Number FORMAT=Z13.
      

      If using SAS Enterprise Guide, the Query Builder provides methods to specify functions in the Expression Builder, and formats in the column properties.
17. 

    Debby Clements on September 30, 2014 2:21 pm

    I have a SAS AF question. I know this blog is about EG, but maybe you or someone can help me.
    I have an AF catalog. I run it on a Linux server using an Attachmate ReflectionsX emulator. If I run it in 9.1 the screens look fine and are normal size - about 6x8". If I run it in 9.3, the screens are all smaller, so are all of the components. the screen is about 5x7 - about an inch smaller all around. SAS has not been able to help me with this. The checkboxes are too teeny to even see. Have you or has anyone out there experienced this? If so, how did you fix it without recoding the whole app?
    thanks
    Debby
    • 

      Chris Hemedinger on October 2, 2014 1:59 pm

      Debby, I haven't personally seen that. But we can see if other readers might have. SAS Tech Support is usually the best hope for something like this -- but with all of the moving parts (including an X-windows emulator) it might be difficult to track down. I'm guessing your Linux version is also different between 9.1 and 9.3? Or is it the same host?
      • 

        Chris Hemedinger on October 16, 2014 8:29 am

        I see this question has been answered on the communities.sas.com forums. It's a font change in SAS 9.3, and it can be adjusted using a -xrm 'SAS.systemFont...' directive.
18. 

    Sandesh on August 14, 2015 3:27 am

    Dear Colleagues,

    I am using SAS EBI 4.3, I have field details like 1234abc11111, 675abc22222, I like to ectract only alfabet in seprate column. which function can help me to do so.

    Sandesh
    • 

      Chris Hemedinger on August 18, 2015 7:37 am

      You can use the COMPRESS function to achieve this, removing just the digits. Example:

      result = compress(field,,'d'); /* the 'd' indicates to remove digits */
19. 

    Vicki on April 21, 2016 4:35 pm

    I am fairly new to SAS EG so I apologize if this question is trivial to some. I have over 10M records that came to me by a vendor concatenated with an alpha character as the delimiter. I am trying to separate the data and cannot figure out how to do this in SAS EG. In Excel, I could do "Text To Columns" and set the delimiter as the alpha character the vendor used. Does anyone know the name of the function in SAS EG that could do this? Below is an example of the data I need to split (delimiter is a capital "i" and a little hard to see).

    67238500197I5490567803

    Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
    • 

      Chris Hemedinger on April 24, 2016 12:59 pm

      There are a few ways to do this, but the easiest method is probably DATA step using the SCAN function to find each "word" separated by the I, and then use INPUT function to read that character string as a number into SAS. Then OUTPUT the result so that each number appears in its own record. You can post the question to SAS Support Communities and a fellow SAS user will provide you some sample code to accomplish it.
      • 

        Vicki on May 25, 2016 4:14 pm

        I was able to use a SUBSTR computed column to pull only the first 10 characters to the left of the delimiter.

        Thank you so much.