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- From: U32472@uicvm.uic.edu (Alan Hinds)
- Newsgroups: bit.listserv.sas-l
- Subject: CPU cost of COMPRESS=YES in CMS SAS 6.07
- Message-ID: <92311.160524U32472@uicvm.uic.edu>
- Date: 6 Nov 92 22:05:23 GMT
- Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
- Lines: 17
-
- I find that data compression (COMPRESS=YES) is very expensive in CPU
- time in SAS 6.07 for CMS. Individual SAS steps take from 2 to 9 times
- as much CPU time with COMPRESS=YES as they do with COMPRESS=NO. The
- average for complete SAS jobs seems to be about a factor of 3 in CPU use
- with compression. Often, the compressed file is larger than if
- compression had not been done! Some files do compress dramatically.
-
- As the large CPU cost of compressing temporary SAS datasets results in
- no permanent disk space savings, I would welcome a SAS option to
- compress permanent SAS datasets only. There are few instances in which
- our temporary disk space is tight enough to require compression, but
- permanent disk space is another matter. Most of my clients will not be
- bothered to specify compression on a dataset basis. They simply take
- the installation default, which here is COMPRESS=YES. Therefore, I
- urge the addition of a COMPRESS=PERM option to compress permanent
- datasets only.
- - Alan Hinds
-