NETWORK Procedure

Many algorithms are sensitive to the order in which PROC NETWORK loads the data. Reading data tables in the same order at each invocation is not guaranteed. If the order of the nodes or links is different, the final result might change. By default, PROC NETWORK ensures that each invocation (with the same machine configuration and parameter settings) produces the same final result. However, this comes at a performance cost, which you can avoid by specifying DETERMINISTIC=FALSE in the PROC NETWORK statement. Specifying DETERMINISTIC=FALSE might improve performance, but the final results might differ. In some cases, this difference is simply a permutation of identifiers (for example, connected components). In other cases, when the algorithm uses local optimization (for example, community detection), the final result might be a local (or alternative) solution.