Other Considerations for Improving Performance

The AUTOSCROLL command controls how information is scrolled as it is written to the Log and Output windows. Specifying small scrolling increments is very expensive in terms of response time, network data traffic, and CPU time.

Under z/OS, AUTOSCROLL is preset to 0 for the Log window. AUTOSCROLL 0 suppresses automatic scrolling and positions the Log window at the bottom of the most recent output when a DATA step or procedure is completed. At that time, of course, you can scroll up to view the contents of the log.

To see the effect of this command, enter AUTOSCROLL 1 on the command line of the Log window and then run PROC OPTIONS. Then enter AUTOSCROLL 0 and run PROC OPTIONS again. The CPU time ratio is more than 30 to 1.

If you are running Attachmate or any other full-functioned 3270 emulator over a slow connection, specify the SAS system option FSDEVICE=EM3179 when you invoke SAS. Menus in applications such as SAS/ASSIST are then displayed as text menus instead of icon menus. The text menus require much less network data transfer and are considerably faster across slow lines.

When you use the direct logon procedure to invoke SAS instead of the TSO logon procedure, SAS acts as your terminal monitor program. The direct logon procedure has three potential advantages for your installation:

For a sample logon procedure and other information about configuring it into the environment at your site, see the installation instructions for SAS software in the z/OS environment.