Data Set Options under OpenVMS

CACHESIZE= Data Set Option: OpenVMS

Controls the size of the I/O data cache that is allocated for a SAS file.

Default:	65024
Valid in:	DATA step and PROC steps
Category:	Data Set Control
Engines:	V9, V8, V7, V6
OpenVMS specifics:	All aspects are host-specific

Syntax
Details
Comparisons
See Also

Syntax

CACHESIZE=n | nK | nM | nG | hexX

n | nK | nM | nG

specifies the cache size in multiples of 1 (bytes); 1,024 (kilobytes); 1,048,576 (megabytes); or 1,073,741,824 (gigabytes). For example, a value of 8 specifies 8 bytes, and a value of 3k specifies 3,072 bytes.

Range:

0 to 2,147,483,136

hexX

specifies the cache size as a hexadecimal value. You must specify the value beginning with a number (0-9), followed by hexadecimal characters (0-9, A-F), and then followed by an X. For example, the value 2dx sets the cache size to 45 bytes.

Details

Pages of SAS files are cached in memory with each cache containing multiple pages. The CACHESIZE= data set option controls the size (in bytes) of the data cache used to buffer the I/O pages. Note that memory is consumed for each data cache, and multiple caches are used for each data set opened. Thus, the disadvantage of specifying extremely large CACHESIZE= values is large consumption of memory. The advantage of a larger CACHESIZE= value is that it reduces the actual number of disk I/Os required to read from or write to a file. For example, if you are reading a large data set, you can use the following statements:

libname test v9 '[mydir]';
data new;
   set test.big(cachesize=65024);
   . . . more data lines . . .
run;

This DATA step reads the TEST.BIG data set in the most efficient manner.

If a data cache is used, then one disk I/O is the size of the CACHESIZE= value. If no data cache is allocated, then one disk I/O is the size of the BUFSIZE= value. The size of the page is controlled with the BUFSIZE= data set option.

Comparisons

The CACHESIZE= and BUFSIZE= data set options are similar, but they have important differences. BUFSIZE= specifies the file's page size, which is a permanent attribute of the file. It can be set only when the file is created. CACHESIZE= is the size of the internal memory cache that is used for the duration of the current file open. It can change any time the file is opened. Specifying a large BUFSIZE= value and CACHESIZE=0 improves I/O the same way that specifying a large CACHESIZE= value does. However, because only complete pages can be written to the file, if the actual data requires less space than the specified BUFSIZE= value, the file uses more disk space than necessary.

For example, if you specify BUFSIZE=65024 and CACHESIZE=0, I/O is performed in increments of the page size. If the data actually require only 32,000 bytes of storage, then more than half the space allocated for the file is unused. If you specify BUFSIZE=32768 and CACHESIZE=65024, I/O is still performed in increments of 65,024 bytes. However, if the data requires only 32,000 bytes, little space is wasted.