On the subject of Syncsort, we have just finished a disappointing evaluation under Solaris 8. A collegue did the bulk of the work and generated these results averaged over several tests:

10m/2vars SORTSIZE = MAX(2GB) SORTSIZE = 64MB sort routine time(s) memory(KB) time(s) memory(KB) time2/time1

sas 34.38 547,937 47.30 65,730 1.38 syncsort 54.70 390,632 77.26 65,536 1.41 syncsort/sas 1.59 0.71 1.63 1.00 n/a

50m/5vars SORTSIZE = MAX(2GB) SORTSIZE = 64MB sort routine time(s) memory(KB) time(s) memory(KB) time2/time1

sas 05:08.0 2,077,180 06:29.2 66,624 1.26 syncsort 07:00.4 290,000 06:48.1 64,000 0.97 syncsort/sas 1.36 0.14 1.05 0.96 n/a

Despite much tinkering with the configuration, it appeared that Syncsort would not use all the available memory thus ran slower. For better sort performance, we will wait for SAS V9.1 to arrive in Canada.

-----Original Message----- From: Jeff Voeller [mailto:c-jeff.voeller@mci.com] Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 11:16 AM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: How to speed up a SAS process?

http://www.syncsort.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf Of > Sheila J Gross > Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 6:01 PM > To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU > Subject: Re: How to speed up a SAS process? > > > My local SUG just had a presentation by the people from > Syncsort, an add-in > which is claimed to be anywhere up to 90% faster than the > internal sort in > SAS. I'm sure they have a web site, I just don't have the URL handy. > > Sheila > > -----Original Message----- > From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@listserv.uga.edu]On Behalf Of > Annie Chang > Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 8:23 PM > To: SAS-L@listserv.uga.edu > Subject: How to speed up a SAS process? > > > When I deal with large datasets, say with 10 millions > of observations of 200 variables, and try to sort it, > sometimes it works reasonably fine (I used option > "tagsort"), sometime for the same datasets, it takes > forever to run and never finishes. I was sort of > puzzled since the CPU doesn't look busy at all and > somehow SAS just decided to take a break in this kind > of situations. > > Is something I could do in addition to get a better > computer? (I do have one with very large HD and 500 MB > though ). > > Thanks for any advice. > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! > http://sbc.yahoo.com