If SAS jobs end abnormally on a sporadic basis, you should review the SAS log for memory-related termination codes such as 378, 878, 80A, 0F9, or A78. You might encounter these termination codes whenever you run system routines.

The abnormal endings that are referenced above might occur when a previous SORT procedure uses a very large amount of memory. In particular, the IBM product DFSORT 1.13 and later has a block-mode sorting feature that enables a SAS job to use very large amounts of memory. When a SAS job attempts to use this memory, the abnormal endings might occur.

SAS Technical Support recommends four steps that you should follow if your SAS job ends abnormally due to memory-related problems:

1. Ensure that your SAS job does not use an unlimited value for the REGION= option (for example, REGION=0M). SAS Technical Support strongly recommends that you limit the memory that is available to SAS jobs. Some SAS procedures will use as much memory as you make available. Such a situation can adversely affect the performance of your system. Most SAS@ 9.1.3 jobs can run efficiently within a 64MB region, but you might need to increase the region size for some jobs.
2. Set the MEMLEAVE= system option so that you reserve a portion of the available region that SAS will not use. This precaution helps to ensure that some memory will be available for running system routines. The MEMLEAVE= option defaults to 512K. If your SAS job has memory-related problems, a general guideline is to set the MEMLEAVE= option to 10% of the size of your region. For example, if REGION=128MB, then set MEMLEAVE=13MB.
3. If your SAS job uses DFSORT, you might observe in the SAS log that a prior PROC SORT used a large amount of memory. If your SAS job ends abnormally with a termination code such as 378, 878, 80A, 0F9, or A78, as a last resort you should turn off DFSORT's block-mode sorting feature by specifying the NOSORTBLKMODE system option.
4. If by turning off the NOSORTBLKMODE you experience the termination codes 378 or A78, contact IBM and reference APAR PK8096.

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