Date:         Thu, 16 May 2002 07:59:29 -0400
Reply-To:     Gerhard Hellriegel <ghellrieg@T-ONLINE.DE>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Gerhard Hellriegel <ghellrieg@T-ONLINE.DE>
Subject:      Re: storage space problems

On Thu, 16 May 2002 13:00:06 +0200, Ulrike =?iso-8859-1?Q?Gr=F6mping?=
<ugroempi@FORD.COM> wrote:

>This compression suggestion sounds interesting. I'm already quite at the
>limit with deleting unused files etc. I'm just wondering whether
>compressed files will be accessible a lot slower than uncompressed ones
>?
>
>Regards, Ulrike
>
>> ...
>> There is another trick to decrease space, which you should try: use the
>> option COMPRESS=YES. That might reduce your dataset-sizes to less than
50%.
>> If you have SAS V8, you can try COMPRESS=BINARY; that is more efficient.
>> The only problem is: you cannot direct access obs if the dataset is
>> compressed. But there is normally no situation where you need it!

It needs a bit more CPU time. On the other hand it is faster, because the
amount of data which is moved by IO operations is smaller. IO operations
are the slowest part of any program run. So it might be faster, because the
cpu-time you need for the compression might be less.