Working in the SAS Windowing Environment

The SAS Session Manager under OpenVMS

The SAS Session Manager (xsassm) is an X client that is run by SAS when you use the SAS windowing environment. The SAS Session Management dialog box is automatically minimized. You can restore it by using the window menu.

[Session Manager Window]

The SAS Session Management dialog box describes which SAS session it controls, the originating host machine from which the SAS session was invoked, and the hexadecimal VMS process identifier of the SAS session.

Note: The SAS Session Manager is not available from a captive account. If you need to run SAS in the windowing environment and want to disable the SAS Session Manager, see Disabling the SAS Session Manager. For more information about captive accounts, see Limitations of Using a Captive Account. [cautionend]

Features of the SAS Session Manager

The SAS Session Manager enables you to do the following:

Map and make icons of all windows of the SAS session. The Restore and Minimize buttons restore and minimize all of the windows that are open in the SAS session that is controlled by the SAS Session Manager. These functions are performed with standard X library calls and will work with most X window managers.
Interrupt the SAS session. The Interrupt button sends a signal to SAS. When SAS receives the signal, it displays a dialog box that asks for confirmation before it cancels the submitted statements.
Terminate the SAS session. Terminate displays a dialog box that asks you to confirm that you want to terminate the SAS session. If you select OK, the SAS Session Manager sends a signal to the SAS session that forces the session to terminate.

CAUTION:
Terminating your SAS session might result in data loss or data corruption.
Before terminating your session, you should attempt to end SAS using one of the methods described in Ending Your SAS Session. When you select Terminate, SAS terminates all tasks, including asynchronous tasks.
Use your host editor from within your SAS session. When you issue the HOSTEDIT command, SAS passes the request to the SAS Session Manager, which then invokes your host editor; the SAS Session Manager must be running for the HOSTEDIT command to take effect. When you issue the HOSTEDIT command, SAS creates a temporary file that contains the data from the active SAS window and passes this file to your host editor. (These temporary files are stored in the directory specified by the WORK= option.) When you save your file in the host editor, the file is copied back into the SAS window if the window is writable, and the temporary files are deleted when the SAS session ends. See HOSTEDIT Command: OpenVMS for more information.

Disabling the SAS Session Manager

In some instances (for example, if you are running SAS from a captive account), you might want to disable the SAS Session Manager. You can disable the SAS Session Manager by performing one of the following steps:

Select Tools Options Preferences. On the General tab, deselect the Start Session manager check box.
Specify the following X resource on the SAS command line at invocation:
```
$ SAS/XRES="-XRM=(SAS.startSessionManager: False)"
```
Specifying the SAS.startSessionManager X resource will deselect the Start Session manager check box in the Preferences dialog box. Specifying this resource in your SAS$XDEFAULTS.DAT file will not disable the SAS Session Manager because the options specified in the Preferences dialog box take precedence.

Note: SAS saves the settings in the Preferences dialog box when it exits. If you have disabled the SAS Session Manager during your session, then the next time you invoke SAS, the SAS Session Manager will not run. To start the SAS Session Manager, select the Start Session manager check box in the Preferences dialog box or specify the following on the SAS command line at invocation:

$ SAS/XRES="-XRM=(SAS.startSessionManager: True)"

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