SAS/CONNECT User's Guide

Version 8 Multi-Process (MP) CONNECT

[IMAGE] Version 8 introduces support for parallel (or multi-) processing with Multi-Process (MP) CONNECT. This facility exploits a local host's multi-processor capability by allowing parallel processing of self-contained tasks and the coordination of all the results into the original SAS session. SAS/CONNECT accomplishes multi-processing by means of a new SASCMD option, which establishes a connection to one or more "remote" SAS sessions that run on the local host. MP CONNECT's "remote" session actually executes on the local host.

Note: MP CONNECT is available with the TCP/IP access method only. [cautionend]

To use MP CONNECT, you specify options in the SIGNON and RSUBMIT statements in order to identify one or more tasks to be processed by a "remote" SAS session. The remote host identifier is supplied by the new PROCESS= option, which is an alias for the existing REMOTE= option. REMOTE= can also be used to specify the remote host identifier. In this context, the identifier does not identify the remote host but is an arbitrary name that you associate with a specific task.

MP CONNECT provides the SASCMD= option, which enables signon to the local host's processor. The WAITFOR statement allows you to wait for one or more asynchronously executing tasks before returning control to the local session. The LISTTASK statement lists all active or completed tasks.

MP CONNECT introduces the PROCESS= option and the SASCMD= option that are used with the SIGNON and RSUBMIT statements:

PROCESS=remote-session-id

is an alias to the REMOTE= option. The PROCESS= option was added as an alias to allow you to differentiate between an MP CONNECT signon (PROCESS=) and a signon to a remote host on a network (REMOTE=). After the remote-session-id has been specified by either the SIGNON command or as a system option, subsequent RSUBMIT, SIGNON, or SIGNOFF commands or statements that omit remote-session-id default to the specified session id.

SASCMD="SAS-command"

is the command that is used to invoke the remote SAS session on the local host. SASCMD is also a global SAS system option. If the SASCMD global system option is already set, a locally set SASCMD= option in the SIGNON command would take precedence over the globally set option.

Note: If you need to execute additional host commands prior to the SAS invocation, it is recommended that you write a host-specific script that contains your host commands and the SAS invocation, and specify this script as the SASCMD value. [cautionend]

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