SAS Data Set Options

POINTOBS= Data Set Option

Specifies whether SAS creates compressed data sets whose observations can be randomly accessed or sequentially accessed.

Valid in:	DATA step and PROC steps
Category:	Observation Control
Restriction:	POINTOBS= is effective only when creating a compressed data set. Otherwise it is ignored.

Syntax
Syntax Description
Details
See Also

Syntax

POINTOBS=YES | NO

Syntax Description

YES

causes SAS software to produce a compressed data set that might be randomly accessed by observation number. This is the default.

Examples of accessing data directly by observation number are:

the POINT= option of the MODIFY and SET statements in the DATA step
going directly to a specific observation number with PROC FSEDIT.

Tip:	Specifying POINTOBS=YES does not affect the efficiency of retrieving information from a data set, but it does increase CPU usage by approximately 10% when creating a compressed data set and when updating or adding information to it.

NO

suppresses the ability to randomly access observations in a compressed data set by observation number.

Tip:

Specifying POINTOBS=NO is desirable for applications where the ability to point directly to an observation by number within a compressed data set is not important.

If you do not need to access data by observation number, then you can improve performance by approximately 10% when creating a compressed data set and when updating or adding observations to it by specifying POINTOBS=NO.

Details

Note that REUSE=YES takes precedence over POINTOBS=YES. For example:

data test(compress=yes pointobs=yes reuse=yes);

results in a data set that has POINTOBS=NO. Because POINTOBS=YES is the default when you use compression, REUSE=YES causes POINTOBS= to change to NO.