In SAS^® Enterprise Miner™, the HP Forest node might fail to complete.

There are no errors or warnings to indicate a problem.

The problem occurs when you are running a large and complex forest model.  Example: Maximum Number of Trees is 200 and Maximum Depth is 30.

One possible cause for this issue is that PROC HPFOREST (the procedure that is invoked by the node) uses a SAVE statement to save the model as a binary file (OUTMDLFILE.bin). The size of that file is limited to approximately 2 GB. If the procedure tries to create a larger file, then the node fails to complete.

Click the Hot Fix tab in this note to access the hot fix for this issue.

After you apply the hot fix, a new property, Use as Modeling Node, is available in the HP Forest node. The new property is also available (without applying a hot fix) beginning in SAS^® Enterprise Miner™ 14.3. These settings are available:

   Yes—(default) The node functions like a modeling node that creates flow and publish score-code, and performs assessment.   

   No—The node does not create flow or publish score-code. Assessment is not performed. 

The model-astore files score.sasast and score.sas files are created.

The SAVE statement is omitted from the PROC HPFOREST invocation when either of the following conditions is true:

• The Variable Selection property is set to No.
• The Variable Selection property is set to Yes and the Variable Importance Method property is set to Loss Reduction.

You can usually avoid building a large OUTMDLFILE.bin file by specifying these settings:

• Use as Modeling Node = No with Variable Selection = No.
• If you want variable selection (Variable Selection = Yes), then use Variable Importance Method = Loss Reduction,  not Random Branch Assignments.

Operating System and Release Information

A fix for this issue for SAS Enterprise Miner 14.2 is available at: