Managing LISSY Jobs and Listings – FAQs

  • What statistical packages can I use with LISSY?

    • R(4.0.5),SAS(9.4) ,SPSS(22), and Stata(16.1) programs all work with LISSY.

  • May I use external files with the LIS databases?

    • If you wish to use external files with the microdata, send your request, along with the attached file, to usersupport@lisdatacenter.org.
    Your request will be reviewed and, if meeting our security standards, you will receive an email with instructions on how to access your file.

  • What does set for review mean, and how can I avoid this?

    • LISSY automatically applies pre- and post-processing checks on received jobs and produced listings to authenticate the user and to ensure that the confidentiality of our data is never breached.

    As a result, some program syntaxes and commands may trigger security alerts. This includes, for example, syntax that displays frequencies on continuous variables or that would allow users to print individual records.
    As soon as LISSY detect that a job is potentially suspicious, LISSY stores it to a security area for manual review and send the error message set for review.

    As a consequence:

    • Adjust your code in order to avoid syntax that would potentially allow to print variables, regardless of the programming language used
    • Do not add the following commands in your job:

    SAS 

     print, NOXWAIT, NOXSYNC

    SPSS 

     print

    Stata 

     list, erase, rm, pwd, cd, rmdir, type, dir, ls

    Please note that the jobs set for review are manually checked. therefore, this could take sometime until the jobs are reviewed. in the meanwhile, kindly avoid sending the same job until it has been processed.

  • What does “handling listing” or “job has been automatically killed” mean, and how can I avoid this?

    • The most common reason for which LISSY to hold on listings in the secure area for review is that listings are excessively long.

    As a consequence:

    • Split your program code into smaller parts and send several shorter job submissions
    • As much as possible, limit the number of datasets combined in a single run
    • Include in your code statistical commands to shorten outputs such as:

    SAS 

     OPTIONS nosource nonotes

    Stata 

     nolog, quietly or noisily

  • I get an error message in my output. Is there a way to debug my program?

    • Debugging can be helped by testing, on your own computer, your code on LIS or LWS downloadable sample files before submitting them to LISSY.

    Be aware that you cannot draw any conclusions based on these artificial samples including a small sub-sample of a random selection households and their respective household members.
    These have been created for instructional and debugging purposes only.

  • Can I receive non-ASCII output/listings from LISSY such as worksheets, HTML-pages, etc.?

    • So far, LISSY only sends back plain ASCII output/listings from SAS, SPSS, R, and Stata.

  • Why do I receive the error message Could not connect to the server?

    • The Job Submission Interface freezes or an error message Could not connect to the server? is sent when LISSY is temporarily down.
    Feel free to contact the user support usersupport@lisdatacenter.org if you face such problem.

  • I get the error message wrong header. How can I avoid this?

    • This error message is received – while submitting a job via email – when LISSY cannot properly read the first four-line header of the job. The easiest – and recommended – way to solve this problem is to submit jobs via the web-based Job Submission Interface.

    Would you prefer to submit jobs via email, ensure the following requirements are met in order for LISSY to properly process jobs, regardless of the programming language used.

    • All emails must be sent in ASCII/plain text format. Ensure your email software is properly configured
    • All job instructions must be written inside the body of the email and not as an attachment
    • Each job must start exactly with a specific four-line header at the very beginning of the email body:
    *user = <your userid>
*password = <your password> (case-sensitive)
*package = <statistical package chosen> (SAS, SPSS, Stata or R)
*project = <project to access> (LIS or LWS)

    If the header contains an error, LISSY returns an error message email to the address from which the job request was submitted

Would you still experience a specific issue not addressed above, please feel free to contact usersupport@lisdatacenter.org. When related to LISSY and whenever possible, provide the user support with the following information:

  1. The type of access used ( web-based Job Submission Interface versus email)
  2. The network and the operating system from which you attempted to access to LISSY (e.g.: at Princeton university on Windows7 64-bits)
  3. A description of the exact stage at which the issue occurs. Any screenshot is welcome
  4. The error message you received if any
  5. The date and time when the problem occured
  6. If the problem is related to a specific job, please mention the job number