SPD Server software
is designed for high-performance data delivery. Its primary function
is to provide user access to SAS data for intensive processing (queries
and sorts) on the host server machine. When client workstations from
varying operating platforms send processing requests to an SPD Server
host, the host returns results in the format required by each client
workstation. SPD Server uses the power of parallel processing to exploit
the threading capabilities of servers with multiple processors.
SPD Server executes
threads—units of processing—in parallel on an SPD Server
host. The software tasks are performed in conjunction with an operating
system that enables threads to execute on any of the machine's available
processors. A specialized machine and operating system are important
processing partners, but SPD Server's power is derived from the software
architecture that enables it to rapidly and efficiently process SAS
data in concurrent parallel threads on multiple processors .
SPD Server is the high-speed
processing tool among SAS products. SPD 4.5 provides on-disk structures
that are compatible with SAS 9 and the large table capacities that
it supports. Enterprise-wide data mining often creates immense tables.
To generate business intelligence quickly, the ability to update tables
that contain billions of rows is more important than ever. The cluster
table structure provides a new foundation for the next generation
of SAS data storage. Previous versions of SPD Server were based on
32-bit architecture that supported just over 2 billion rows and 32,768
columns. SPD Server is based on a 64-bit architecture that supports
tables with over nine quintillion rows and over 2 billion columns.
SPD Server 4.5 operates
on computers running SAS 9.2 or later. PC users that do not use SAS
can still use SPD Server. Information about connecting to SPD Server
with Other Clients is found in
Using SAS Scalable Performance Data (SPD) Server with Other Clients. SAS users can
access SPD Server either by using SQL pass-through or by using the
SAS language.
Syntax Conventions: SPD Server software supports SAS users and other users. SPD Server
documentation uses common terminology that both audiences should understand.
In SPD Server documentation, SAS data sets are referred to as tables,
SAS variables are referred to as columns, and SAS observations are
referred to as rows. The SPD Server product is referred to as SPD
Server or the software, depending on the context of the documentation.