If you run PROC METALIB to register or update a library that contains several thousand tables, you might receive errors similar to the following:

PROC METALIB opens each table in the library to fetch its attributes and keeps each table open for the duration of its execution. The procedure closes all tables at once, during termination. As a result of this behavior, the number of files opened by PROC METALIB can exceed per–user or per–process open file limits on operating systems that impose such limits.

To circumvent the problem, you must either increase the system open file limits, or use the SELECT or EXCLUDE statements in PROC METALIB to limit the number of tables that are to be registered or updated within a single PROC METALIB step.

Operating System and Release Information

Product Family	Product	System	Product Release		SAS Release
			Reported	Fixed*	Reported	Fixed*
SAS System	Base SAS	64-bit Enabled AIX	9.21_M1	9.4	9.2 TS2M0	9.4 TS1M0
		64-bit Enabled HP-UX	9.21_M1	9.4	9.2 TS2M0	9.4 TS1M0
		64-bit Enabled Solaris	9.21_M1	9.4	9.2 TS2M0	9.4 TS1M0
		HP-UX IPF	9.21_M1	9.4	9.2 TS2M0	9.4 TS1M0
		Linux	9.21_M1	9.4	9.2 TS2M0	9.4 TS1M0
		Linux for x64	9.21_M1	9.4	9.2 TS2M0	9.4 TS1M0
		OpenVMS on HP Integrity	9.21_M1	9.4	9.2 TS2M0	9.4 TS1M0
		Solaris for x64	9.21_M1	9.4	9.2 TS2M0	9.4 TS1M0

* For software releases that are not yet generally available, the Fixed Release is the software release in which the problem is planned to be fixed.

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PROC METALIB cumulatively opens all tables in the library, closing all of them simultaneously at termination. For libraries with a large number of tables, this can cause the SAS process to exceed the number of open files allowed by operating system user or process limits.

Type:	Problem Note
Priority:	high
Topic:	System Administration ==> Performance ==> OS Data Management ==> Access ==> SAS I/O Data Management ==> Data Sources ==> Metadata Data Management ==> Data Sources ==> SAS Libraries

Date Modified:	2012-03-13 09:10:26
Date Created:	2011-11-23 10:37:58