help required

[newbie]

I have a very huge dataset with 23 column varibales.When using proc sort(with 13 varibales being mentioned as the by variables) options it takes more time to execute so tried using hash thinking it would be more efficient but the issue is, it errors out with a messgae something like "hash object has insuficient memory. aborted during the execution phase" .Could anyone help me to resolve this problem?.. If hashing is not the best approach for sorting then could anyone suggest me someother technique in place of proc sort.

Thanks.

Ken

[art297]

Some questions:

  1. how many records do you have?

  2. what operating system are you using

  3. what version of SAS are you using

  4. why do you need to sort by 13 variables?

  5. what do you plan to do with the data?

[Tom]

Hard to make a good diagnosis without more information, but it sounds more like a problem for PROC SUMMARY.  You can use CLASS statement and generate summaries for many combinations in a single pass.