When you experience a problem using SAS Enterprise Miner, you can often resolve the problem by following the techniques in this article. These are the same techniques that are used by SAS Technical Support team members. If you follow the techniques, then you can probably solve the problem. Even when you cannot solve the problem, the techniques help organize information so that SAS Technical Support staff can assist you more efficiently.
Most SAS Enterprise Miner problems generally fall into these categories:
A first step to solving an unexpected problem is to search the SAS Knowledge site for existing notes and articles about your problem.
Enter some of the words from the error message or symptom that you encountered. Use miner as the first word. Because notes and article titles describe problem symptoms, you can quickly scan the results for possible matches.
Sometimes solutions are found by examining additional SAS Enterprise Miner documentation.
If you need to contact SAS Technical Support about your problem, go to the SAS Customer Support Center and open a case.
The form guides you through information that is usually necessary for directing your issue quickly to the most appropriate team, and for troubleshooting your problem.
Common problems in this category include symptoms such as these:
The recommended strategy for those types of problems is to search the SAS Knowledge site. Notes and articles are added and updated based on common customer experiences.
If you encounter a problem creating a project or a diagram in a new SAS Enterprise Miner installation, then a first step is to follow the "Verify the Installation" steps. The steps are documented in the Administration and Configuration guide, and you can download the guide from the product documentation page above. Follow the steps in the guide. If the steps in the guide do not complete successfully, then a problem exists with the installation.
If you cannot open a project that was migrated, then be sure to include the word migrate when you search the SAS Knowledge site. Migration problems might result when you move from a previous release of SAS Enterprise Miner, or when you move to a different operating system. If you need to contact SAS Technical Support for help, then be sure to include information about the SAS Enterprise Miner release and operating system of the original project. Include information about the destination release and operating system. Note that often it is easier to create a new diagram in the new release than it is to try to debug a migrated project. You might be able to move forward with your analysis more quickly if you create a new project in the new release.
A data source cannot be opened or accessed
A data source in SAS Enterprise Miner points to a SAS data set. If the underlying SAS data set is changed after the data source is created, then problems might occur. If you experience problems accessing the data source in that case, then an often-employed quick solution is to delete the data source and replace it with a new one.
If your underlying data set contains formats, then you might encounter this error, or a similar error:
The usual solutions are to remove the formats from the variables, or to identify a proper format search-path. Then, create a new data source. For more information, see SAS Note 20501, "'Advisor Error: SAS Formats for this table could not be located' appears when creating a data source"
A node in a diagram gives an error or unexpected result
If you are using Java Web Start to run SAS Enterprise Miner, then a quick and often useful step is to exit SAS Enterprise Miner and clear the caches. Clear your Java cache, clear your web browser cache, and re-start SAS Enterprise Miner.
A common solution when a node displays an error is to replace the node. Delete the node, replace it with a new node (do not copy and paste or you might copy the problem), and try again. When you replace the node with a new one, try using default settings first, to see whether the problem is due to specific node settings.
Most node problems produce a generic message such as "a problem has been encountered on the server" or "run-time error". To find a specific cause, examine the node log. To open the node log, right-click the node, and select Results.... Click the Log icon in the upper left corner of the Results window (or select View ► SAS Results ► Log). Use the Find tool to search for errors in the log, starting from the top, and working down. Sometimes no error information is displayed because the log is truncated. If the log is truncated, then a note is displayed at the bottom, and the note tells where to look for the complete log. If you need assistance interpreting any of the errors, then try the SAS Knowledge site to see whether a SAS note or article exists.
For information about how to add more information to each node log, see SAS Note 58396, "Specify the MPRINT option in SAS® Enterprise Miner(tm) Project Start Code to display additional diagnostic information in node logs."
Sometimes a problem with a node is data-specific. To diagnose whether something about your data is causing the problem, try the flow using one of the SAS Enterprise Miner sample data sets in the SAMPSIO library. The SAS Enterprise Miner Help chapter that corresponds to the node that you are using usually identifies a sample data set that can be used for testing that node. If no data source is identified for testing the problem node, then try using the HMEQ (Home Equity) data source. You can create the HMEQ data source by following these steps.
If you can reproduce the problem using sample data, then continue to simplify the flow to try to narrow the scope of possibilities. If you can reproduce a problem using sample data, then SAS Technical Support can try exactly what you are trying.
If the problem occurs with your data, but not with sample data, then examine your data to see what might be causing a problem. Look for causes that might involve having too many missing values, or not enough variability, or a problem variable, and so on.
If your data source is large, then you can reduce the amount of time needed to conduct diagnostic tests by trying a sample of the data. Add a Sample node to your flow to help the flow run more quickly. If the problem occurs on the full data, but not on the sample, then do not automatically conclude that the size is the problem. The problem might be caused by some of the data that is not included in the sample.
Once you have simplified the flow as much as possible, you can send a model package to SAS Technical Support if you need help resolving the problem. The model package shows your flow, the variable settings, and logs with errors. The model package does not include your data. If you can reproduce your problem using sample data, then send the model package that used the sample data. This knowledge article explains how to create a model package.
SAS KB0036530, "Creating a model package (SPK file) in SAS® Enterprise Miner™"
If you need to open a case for your problem, visit SAS Customer Support Center. After you receive a case number via email, reply to the email and attach your model package (the SPK file).