Configuring SAS for DCOM

The COM Service Control Manager (SCM), which launches single user servers such as the IOM Workspace, does not load a user profile or environment. As a result, SAS sessions launched via DCOM are not initialized with the user's home directory (typically C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\My Documents), environment variables or other profile settings.

The default SAS CONFIG file on Windows (!SASROOT\nls\<Language Code>\SASV9.CFG) contains a definition for SASUSER that contains the Windows shell enumeration ?CSIDL_PERSONAL. For local SAS sessions, this enumeration refers to the user's home directory. However, when SAS is invoked by DCOM, ?CSIDL_PERSONAL resolves to a system folder that can usually only be accessed if the client has administrator privileges at the server.

To correct this issue, you must edit the -SET MYSASFILES and -SASUSER commands in SASV9.CFG to refer to a location that all users can access. Additionally, because the -SASUSER setting will be shared, you should specify the -RSASUSER option to ensure that none of the users update the user settings.

Default Lines from SASV9.CFG:

/* Setup the MYSASFILES system variable              */
-SET MYSASFILES "?CSIDL_PERSONAL\My SAS Files\9.1"

/* Setup the default SAS System user profile folder  */
-SASUSER "?CSIDL_PERSONAL\My SAS Files\9.1"

Recommended Change:

/* Setup the MYSASFILES system variable                     */
-SET MYSASFILES "?CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\My SAS Files\9.1"

/* Setup the default SAS System user profile folder         */
-SASUSER "?CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\My SAS Files\9.1"
-RSASUSER

On Windows XP, this change would typically place SASUSER at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\My SAS Files\9.1.

On most systems, this path would be accessible to everyone. If you choose another path, you must make sure that all of your potential users have read permissions in that directory.

If you use SAS without IOM on the same system, you might want to create a separate default SASV9.CFG file. See Customizing the Startup Command for Workspace Servers in the SAS Integration Technologies: Server Administrator's Guide for details on how to update the COM startup command to specify a different file in the -CONFIG option.