topic Re: What could be the possible reason one SAS table is much bigger than the other one in size in SAS Data Management

What could be the possible reason one SAS table is much bigger than the other one in size

ciphercong — Sat, 08 Sep 2018 19:42:01 GMT

Hi,

I created two tables with identical columns table A has 1.5 million records and SAS table B has 6.5 million records, saved in same library, both are read from text files. (A from A.txt and B from B.txt)

The problem I have is , although A is 1/4 the size of B , A is shown 50GB(yes 50GB) in storage and B is shown only 5 GB.

I wonder what caused that? Apparently based on my experience B's size looks reasonable, but I could not identify any issues with A, so I have no idea why table A took 50 GB in storage. (they have identical columns)

Thanks!!

Re: What could be the possible reason one SAS table is much bigger than the other one in size

PeterClemmensen — Sat, 08 Sep 2018 20:19:07 GMT

Run PROC CONTENTS on your data sets and check the lengths of the variables in them. Should give you the answer.

Re: What could be the possible reason one SAS table is much bigger than the other one in size

Astounding — Sat, 08 Sep 2018 23:26:52 GMT

It's possible you created A using compress=no and B using compress=yes (or possibly compress=binary).

Re: What could be the possible reason one SAS table is much bigger than the other one in size

ciphercong — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 15:50:31 GMT

Thanks !

Re: What could be the possible reason one SAS table is much bigger than the other one in size

ciphercong — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 15:51:09 GMT

Thank you! I think they are both uncompressed but worth trying..