SPDEINDEXSORTSIZE= System Option

Specifies the memory space size that the sorting utility can use when sorting values for creating an index.

Valid in:	Configuration file, SAS invocation, OPTIONS statement, Systems Options window
Category:	System administration: Performance
Default:	32M
Engine:	SPD Engine only

Syntax

Required Argument

Details

Syntax

SPDEINDEXSORTSIZE=n | nK | nM | nG

Required Argument

n

is the size of memory space in bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes. If n=0, the sort utility uses its default. The valid value range is from 1,048,576 to 10,736,369,664 bytes.

Details

The SPD Engine can create multiple indexes with a single scan of a data set. The SPD Engine spawns a single thread for each index created, and then processes the threads simultaneously. Although creating indexes in parallel is much faster than scanning the data set for each index, the default for this option is NO because parallel index creation requires extra utility space to store the sorting files and requires additional memory. If index creation fails due to insufficient resources, you can do one or both the following:

Increase the size of the utility file space using the SPDEUTILLOC= system option.
Set the SAS system option to MEMSIZE=0 (footnote 1) and increase the utility space that is used for index sorting using the SPDEINDEXSORTSIZE= system option.

The maximum SPDEINDEXSORTSIZE= value is 10 GB, but this value cannot be honored on host systems that are limited to 2 GB. On host systems that have a 64-bit LONG data type, SPD Engine honors values greater that 2 GB. On hosts systems that have a 32-bit LONG data type, SPD Engine honors only the memory used up to 2 GB. The SPDEINDEXSORTSIZE option value can be set to a larger value, but the larger value is not honored.

Note: You receive a warning in the SAS log when the larger value is not honored and used.

FOOTNOTE 1: For z/OS, increase the REGION size.[return]