Features That Boost Processing Performance

Automatic Sort Capabilities

The SPD Engine's automatic sort capabilities save time and resources for SAS applications that process large data sets. With the SPD Engine, you do not need to invoke the SORT procedure before you submit a SAS statement with a BY clause. The SPD Engine encounters a BY clause and the data is not already sorted or indexed on the BY variable. The SPD Engine automatically sorts the data without affecting the permanent data set or producing a new output data set.

Queries Using Indexes

Large data sets can be indexed to maximize performance. Indexes permit rapid WHERE expression evaluations for indexed variables. The SPD Engine takes advantage of multiple CPUs to search the index component file efficiently.

Note: You cannot create an index or composite index on a variable if the variable name contains any of the following special characters:

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Parallel Index Creation

In addition, the SPD Engine supports parallel index creation so that indexing large data sets is not time-consuming. The SPD Engine decomposes data set append or insert operations into a set of steps that can be performed in parallel. The level of parallelism depends on the number of indexes present in the data set. The more indexes you have, the greater the exploitation of parallelism during index creation. However, index creation requires utility file space and memory resources.

Note: You cannot create an index or composite index on a variable if the variable name contains any of the following special characters:

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