Error Handling in Utility Macros

Dealing with errors is always problematic. It can be particularly challenging in utility macros. Does every macro need to check for every possible error? Or should a developer assume some level of error checking has been done by the calling application, program or macro?

My view is that assuming a certain level of error checking by the calling application, program or macro is reasonable; but that one should still do a reasonable level of defensive programming.

For example, consider the generateOptionTag macro that I have mentioned in a number of posts. It creates a select tag from data in a SAS data set. But suppose the data set, or the variables for the coded value, or the label for the select tag, don't exist?

The minimalist defensive solution is to just exit the macro without generating the select tag. But the user is left with a user interface page that is incomplete/wrong. And since the user, in this case, is almost certainly not a developer, determining exactly what additional messages or diagnostics are appropriate can be challenging.

The approach that I like is to make sure the user knows that an error happened and, at the same time, give them enough information so they can alert the right folks.

Both the Stored Process Server and SAS/IntrNet Application Server programs will display a message to the user if an error is encountered. But since defensive programming has prevented a SAS error, the issue is how can we force that message without generating a SAS error? Reviewing the SAS knowledge base article Tips to remove the Show SAS log button if a SAS® Stored Process executes with an error suggests a simple solution: set the value of the SYSCC macro variable to a value larger that 4.

But we still need to make it easy for the user to find the error. That is where Using NOTE, WARNING, ERROR in Your Program's Generated Messages can help.  You can produce an error message that provides some details and since it will be highlighted in the SAS Log, it is easy to find.

So here is a typical snippet of code that illustrates this technique:

%let syscc=256;
%put ERROR: The specified data set, &data, is not available.;
%return;

The %return statement stops the currently executing macro and returns control to the calling macro or program.

And in a SAS Server Page utility macro that is generating a user interface, you can also generate a mailto hyperlink to make it easy for the user to report the error. Something like:

Email the <a href="mailto:developer-email?Subject=Error Message">developer</a> about the error.

can make it easy for the user to report the error.