When writing through the OS cache, any subsequent read will not have to access the disk, but will read the contents of the cache, if the data are still there. Since it is quite common that the data written to WORK are read again shortly after, disabling the OS cache will have a negative impact on performance (and lead to additional disk contention in the physical volumes containing the WORK directories).
A good OS will make very good decisions which data to keep in its cache; it will also help you by deferring disk writes (speeding up virtual write performance) and by reading ahead for you.
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Need to connect to databases in SAS Viya? SAS’ David Ghan shows you two methods – via SAS/ACCESS LIBNAME and SAS Data Connector SASLIBS – in this video.