NOTE: Development With SAS: NOTE: DS2 Final, Final Comments

I got a lot of feedback about the DS2 articles I recently wrote. I should add a few more summarising comments:

I mentioned that DS2 doesn't currently support MERGE. Chris Hemedinger commented that the ability to use SQL in your SET statement means that you can use a SQL join on the SET statement and thereby a) achieve a MERGE, and b) benefit from "pushing" the work to a source database (if using non-SAS data).

Jack Hamilton observed that accidentally omitting the QUIT at the end of a call to PROC DS2 will cause some less-than-obvious syntax errors for the following conventional DATA step. Beware!

With power comes great responsibility! Whilst a DS2 program and its executing threads are constrained to one process on one machine, there are currently no limits to how many threads a user can request to use with thread programs. So, a user could take full advantage of all the cores on the machine - to the detriment of their fellow users.

DS2 takes no account of the CPUCOUNT option, and it has no association with SAS Grid controls (with which, SAS administrators are able to manage and control users' use of system resources). I'm sure that some degree of control, facilitating workload balancing, will follow in time

NOTE: Development With SAS