LISSY Coding Best Practices

The LISSY system processes received jobs and returns listings with aggregated results, usually within minutes. However, LISSY’s processing time can vary depending on the total number of submitted jobs at a given time and on the complexity of each job. We recommend to apply the followings to avoid system congestion:

• Send each job only once. If it is not returned, do not send it again.
• Wait for each job to be returned before submitting your next one.
• Do not request frequencies on continuous variables because this violates our security measures.
• Do not attempt to view, examine, or print individual records at either the person or household level. Violating this rule could result in the termination of your LISSY access.
• Do not use commands that violate our security measures. Certain program syntax and commands will trigger system security alerts and may interrupt traffic. See our FAQs for tips on avoiding disallowed commands under the question “What does set for review mean, and how can I avoid this?”.
• Try breaking up statistical queries into several smaller jobs because jobs that result in very long output may cause system congestion. If you encounter difficulties repeatedly, please contact User Support.
• Debug your program before submitting a job to LISSY, especially if you are not familiar with statistical package syntax. Debugging can be done on your home computer by testing your jobs on our downloadable sample files.