I am using a very huge data set in SAS for windows. How do I minimize space requirements?
When you are working with large data sets, you can do the following steps to reduce space requirements. 1. Split huge data set into smaller data sets. 2. Clean up your working space as much as possible at each step. 3. Use dataset options (keep= , drop=) or statement (keep, drop) to limit to only the variables needed. 4. Use IF statement or OBS = to limit the number of observations. 5. Use WHERE= or WHERE or index to optimize the WHERE expression to limit the number of observations in a Proc Step and Data Step. 6. Use length to limit the bytes of variables. 7. Use _null_ dataset name when you don’t need to create a dataset. 8. Compress dataset using system options or dataset options (COMPRESS=yes or COMPRESS=binary). 9. Use SQL to do merge, summary, sort etc. rather than a combination of Proc Step and Data Step with temporary datasets.
