Comparing the Default Base SAS Engine and the SPD Engine

Default Base SAS engine data sets and SPD Engine data sets have many similarities. They both store data in a SAS library, which is a logical collection of files. Because the SPD Engine data libraries can span devices and file systems, the SPD Engine is ideal for use with very large data sets. Also, the SPD Engine enables you to specify separate directories, or devices, for each component in the LIBNAME statement. Creating and Loading SPD Engine Files provides details about designing and setting up the SPD Engine data libraries.

An SPD Engine library can contain data files, metadata files, and index files. The SPD Engine does not support catalogs, SAS views, MDDBs, or other utility (byte) files.

The SPD Engine uses the zFS file system for z/OS.

Utility files are generated during the SPD Engine operations that need extra space (for example, when creating parallel indexes or when sorting very large files). Default locations exist for all platforms but, if you have large amounts of data to process, the default location might not be large enough. The SPD Engine system option SPDEUTILLOC= lets you specify a set of file locations in which to store utility scratch files. For more information, see SPDEUTILLOC= System Option.

To create a library to store interim data sets, specify the SPD Engine option TEMP= in the LIBNAME statement. If you want current applications to refer to these interim files using one-level names, specify the library on the USER= system option.

The following example code creates a user libref for interim data sets. It is deleted at the end of the session.

libname user spde 'SAS-library' temp=yes; 
data a; x=1; 
run; 
proc print data=a;   

The USER= option can be set in the configuration file so that applications that reference interim data sets with one-level names can run in the SPD Engine.

The following chart compares the SPD Engine capabilities to default Base SAS engine capabilities.