How to view or create ODS output without causing SAS® to stop responding or run slowly

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SAS makes it easy for you to create a large amount of procedure output with very few statements. However, when you create a large amount of procedure output with the Output Delivery System (ODS), your SAS session might stop responding or run slowly. In some cases, SAS generates a “Not Responding” message. Beginning with SAS® 9.3, the SAS windowing environment creates HTML output by default and enables ODS Graphics by default. If your code creates a large amount of either HTML output or ODS Graphics output, you can experience performance issues in SAS. This blog article discusses how to work around this issue.

Option 1: Enable the Output window instead of the Results Viewer window

By default, the SAS windowing environment with SAS 9.3 and SAS® 9.4 creates procedure output in HTML format and displays that HTML output in the Results Viewer window. However, when a large amount of HTML output is displayed in the Results Viewer window, performance might suffer. To display HTML output in the Results Viewer window, SAS uses an embedded version of Internet Explorer within the SAS environment. And because Internet Explorer does not process large amounts of HTML output well, it can slow down your results.

If you do not need to create HTML output, you can display procedure output in the Output window instead. To do so, add the following statements to the top of your code before the procedure step:

ods _all_ close;
ods listing;

The Output window can show results faster than HTML output that is displayed in the Results Viewer window.

If you want to enable the Output window via the SAS windowing environment, take these steps:

1. Choose Tools ► Options ► Preferences.
2. Click the Results tab.
3. In this window, select Create listing and clear the Create HTML check box.
4. Click OK.

A large amount of output in the Output window, which typically does not cause a performance issue, might still generate an “Output window is full” message. In that case, you can route your LISTING output to a disk file. Use either the PRINTTO procedure or the ODS LISTING statement with the FILE= option. Here is an example:

ods _all_ close;
ods listing file="sasoutput.lst";

Option 2: Disable ODS Graphics

Beginning with SAS 9.3, the SAS windowing environment enables ODS Graphics by default. Therefore, most SAS/STAT® procedures now create graphics output automatically. Naturally, graphics output can take longer to create than regular text output. If you are running a SAS/STAT procedure but you do not need to create graphics output, add the following statement to the code before the procedure step:

ods graphics off;

If you want to set this option via the SAS windowing environment, take these steps:

1. Choose Tools ► Options ► Preferences.
2. Click the Results tab.
3. In this window, clear the Use ODS Graphics check box.
4. Click OK.

For maximum efficiency, you can combine the ODS GRAPHICS OFF statement with the statements listed in the previous section, as shown here:

ods _all_ close;
ods listing;
ods graphics off;

Option 3: Write ODS output to disk

You can ask SAS to write ODS output to disk but not to create output in the Results Viewer window. To do so, add the following statement to your code before your procedure step:

ods results off;

Later in your SAS session, if you decide that you want to see output in the Results Viewer window, submit this statement:

ods results on;

If you want to disable the Results Viewer window via the SAS windowing environment, take these steps:

1. Choose Tools ► Options ► Preferences.
2. Click the Results tab.
3. In this window, clear the View results as they are generated check box.
4. Click OK.

The ODS RESULTS OFF statement is a valuable debugging tool because it enables you to write ODS output to disk without viewing it in the Results Viewer window. You can then inspect the ODS output file on disk to check the size of it (before you open it).

Option 4: Suppress specific procedure output from the ODS results

In certain situations, you might use multiple procedure steps to send output to ODS. However, if you want to exclude certain procedure output from being written to ODS, use the following statement:

ods exclude all;

Ensure that you place the statement right before the procedure step that contains the output that you want to suppress.

If necessary, use the following statement when you want to resume sending subsequent procedure output to ODS:

ods exclude none;

Five reasons to use ODS EXCLUDE to suppress SAS output discusses the ODS EXCLUDE statement in more detail.

Conclusion

Certain web browsers display large HTML files better than others. When you use SAS to create large HTML files, you might try using a web browser such as Chrome, Firefox, or Edge instead of Internet Explorer. However, even browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Edge might run slowly when processing a very large HTML file.

Instead, as a substitute for HTML, you might consider creating PDF output (with the ODS PDF destination) or RTF output (with the ODS RTF destination). However, if you end up creating a very large PDF or RTF file, then Adobe (for PDF output) and Microsoft Word (for RTF output) might also experience performance issues.

The information in this blog mainly pertains to the SAS windowing environment. For information about how to resolve ODS issues in SAS® Enterprise Guide®, refer to Take control of ODS results in SAS Enterprise Guide.

How to view or create ODS output without causing SAS® to stop responding or run slowly was published on SAS Users.