Creating ODS output with the PDF destination might consume excessive CPU cycles, and your SAS^® session might seem to stop responding when you specify the BOOKMARKGEN and COMPRESS arguments.

Starting in the SAS^® 9.4M6 (TS1M6) release, functionality was introduced to enable PDF output to be compressed to reduced PDF file sizes. This compression is controlled via the COMPRESS argument in the ODS PDF statement, and the argument value is an integer between zero and nine. The higher the value, the greater the compression that is attempted by the compression algorithm.

Any compression requires additional CPU cycles. A compression value that is over the default value of six (COMPRESS=6) can lead to the consumption of excessive CPU cycles. The additional reduction in PDF file size that occurs over and above the default value is minimal. The recommendation is to use the default value of COMPRESS=6 and to use any higher values carefully.

The hot fix that is provided in this note also improves the compression algorithm.

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

Operating System and Release Information

A fix for this issue for Base SAS 9.4_M7 is available at:

A fix for this issue for Base SAS 9.4_M6 is available at: