The data management black box--SAS® Job Monitor

No more combing through SAS log files.

Solving the mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 hinges on the finding the plane's black boxes, or flight data and cockpit voice recorder. An airplane’s black box is something we hope never has to be used, but when there’s a problem, we sure are glad that it’s there. The black box holds incredibly valuable data about the aircraft, crew and flight details and transmits locator beacon signals that tell us where the missing plane is and, if recovered, can shed light on what went wrong.

SAS® Data Management has its own black box of sorts, called SAS® Job Monitor, which shows underlying data from jobs and processes. It was developed to help users quickly and easily pinpoint the source of errors should they encounter a hiccup while running SAS jobs and processes.

Gone are the days of combing through log files to find errors or comparing timestamps from log to log to troubleshoot. With SAS Job Monitor, you can monitor status information and performance statistics, view historical run times and drill down into the data and trends for jobs running on a SAS Workspace server or a DataFlux® Data Management Server. What’s more, all the information is displayed graphically so you can easily identify any red flags.

A plug-in from SAS Environment Manager, which is accessed through the SAS Data Management Console, Job Monitor’s functionality is targeted toward administrators and developers, and it offers them three key benefits:

Uses what’s already in place: No need to download additional data or install more software, Job Monitor runs on information that’s already available.

Troubleshoot from one central location: The web-based interface lets you see all jobs and processes across all servers, making it easy to identify errors. There’s no back and forth between systems to see what went wrong and why.

Understand complicated processes and trends: With Job Monitor, you can easily see associations and connections between jobs. What’s more, you can look at individual runs for each job and track performance over time.

For more information about Job Monitor or the Data Management Console, visit:

SAS Job Monitor page in the What’s New in SAS® 9.4 document .

Data Management Studio User Guide .

The data management black box--SAS® Job Monitor was published on SAS Users.