MINPARTSIZE= System Option

Specifies the minimum size that the data component partitions can be. The value is specified when the SPD Engine data set is created.
Valid in: configuration file, SAS invocation
Default: 16M
Engine: SPD Engine only

Syntax

MINPARTSIZE=n | nK | nM | nG

Required Argument

n
is the size of the partition in bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes. The maximum value for the minimum partition size is 2GB–1 or 2047 megabytes.
Restriction:This restriction applies only to 32–bit hosts with the following operating systems: z/OS, Linux SLES 9 x86, and the Windows family. In SAS 9.3, if you create a data set with a partition size greater than or equal to 2 gigabytes, you cannot open the data set with any version of SPD Engine before SAS 9.2. The following error message is written to the SAS log: ERROR: Unable to open data file because its data representation differs from the SAS session data representation.

Details

Specifying MINPARTSIZE= sets a lower limit for the partition size that can be specified with the PARTSIZE= option. The MINPARTSIZE= specification could affect whether the partitions are created with approximately the same number of observations. A small partition size means more open files during processing. Your operating system might have a limit on the number of open files used.