A SAS 9.3 job that is running in a z/OS operating environment might loop or become unresponsive if the available memory is exceeded. If this occurs, cancel the job and increase the available memory for the job using the REGION= parameter.

To verify that the problem was memory related, after the job is canceled, compare the IEF032 line in the JES messages with the initialization memory notes in the SAS log. If the JES IEF032 message shows that the memory used to be about the same or more than the memory reported in the SAS log, the issue might be memory related.

For example:

IEF032I line from Jes Messages:
IEF032I STEP/SASMXG  /STOP  2011284.1639 
         CPU:     0 HR  03 MIN  28.60 SEC    SRB:     0 HR  00 MIN  00.04 SEC    
         VIRT:   896K  SYS:   392K  EXT:   101016K  SYS:    10848K

Initialization memory notes from the SAS log:
NOTE: 8680K BYTES WERE AVAILABLE BELOW THE LINE AT INITIALIZATION.
  
NOTE: 90M BYTES WERE AVAILABLE ABOVE THE LINE AFTER ADJUSTMENT FOR MEMLEAVE=10M.

Comparing the IEF032I VIRT (below the line memory used) + EXT (above the line memory used) to the SAS invocation memory above and below the line notes:

896K + 101016K to 8680k +90M (after adjustment for MEMLEAVE)

In this example, the memory used by the job exceeds the memory obtained by SAS at initialization. In this example, the job resulted in a looping condition.

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