SAS Studio: Help Center

How does the performance of SAS Studio compare with other SAS interfaces?

The performance of SAS Studio is very similar to the performance of SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Display Manager.

The performance of SAS client software can be adversely affected by network latency that occurs when the client software communicates with a remote SAS server. For example, when the SAS Enterprise Guide client machine and the SAS server are physically far apart, you are more likely to encounter higher network latency that can negatively affect performance. Typically, the SAS Studio web server and the SAS server are located near each other, so there is lower network latency. However, as a web application, SAS Studio performance is also affected by the efficiency of the communication between the web server and the browser on the SAS client machine.

There is no specific limit to the number of concurrent users SAS Studio can support. In addition to factors such as the number and speed of the processors and the amount of RAM, the number of users that SAS Studio can support depends on the following workload factors:

• the number of transactions that are submitted per hour
• the number of transactions that involve running code
• the complexity of the code that is being run
• the size of the data that is being analyzed

SAS Studio is a web application, and the main source of resource demands are from submitted code rather than user activity in the application, such as selecting and populating tasks. SAS Studio and SAS Enterprise Guide are similar because they are both client applications that use workspace servers to process SAS statements. However, the applications use workspace servers differently.

• SAS Enterprise Guide starts a single workspace server for a user after that user has submitted a task, program, or query. The workspace server remains in use until the user's session has ended.
• SAS Studio starts two workspace servers for each user who signs on. One workspace server is used to handle user activity in the application, and the second workspace server is used to process the submitted tasks, programs, and queries. The workspace servers remain in use until the user's session ends. Additional resources can be used in the following situations:
  • an additional JProxy session is started when a user runs an interactive task that has any graphic results. The JProxy session remains active and is used for any additional graphic results until the interactive user signs off or the SAS Studio session times out.
  • additional workspace servers are started for each background job that a user submits. If the background job includes graphic results, then a JProxy session is also started. The server is released when the background job is complete.

Because SAS Studio uses two workspace servers per user, the RAM demands for SAS Studio are higher than they are for SAS Enterprise Guide. In performance testing, each SAS Studio user is allocated an average of approximately 100 MB of RAM. For large numbers of signed-on users, SAS Studio performs better on a system with greater RAM capacity even if a large percentage of the RAM is allocated. If the RAM is exhausted and the system runs out of memory, the system can use a swap file, although this might affect the response time. How effectively SAS Studio can use a swap file to exceed physical memory depends on your operating system and how it is tuned.