A Good News ... and WHY?

[hellohere]

Using X command inside SAS to unzip big files in PC/Windows, and find the unzip speed is much faster than WinRAR(double click, default).

SAS takes less than 3 Min. and WinRAR takes 10+Min.

Anyone knows why? 

Also one big holdback in SAS is that complicate process needs take many data steps which consume much. Anyone knows how to speed that up?!

[Reeza]

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@hellohere wrote:

Also one big holdback in SAS is that complicate process needs take many data steps which consume much. Anyone knows how to speed that up?!

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Reduce multiple reads of the data by loading it into RAM if possible - lookup the SASFILE statement.

Reduce multiple reads of the data by ensuring that as many steps are combined as possible. 

Use PROCS when available as they're more optimized. 

Otherwise, a variety of papers on the topic here:

https://www.lexjansen.com/search/searchresults.php?q=speed%20up%20your%20code

[SASKiwi]

"Using X command inside SAS to unzip big files in PC/Windows, and find the unzip speed is much faster than WinRAR(double click, default).

SAS takes less than 3 Min. and WinRAR takes 10+Min."

If you are using a remote SAS server the X command will execute on the SAS server, while a double-click in Windows Explorer will execute on your PC even if the results get saved back to your SAS server. This most likely explains why it is so much slower.

[Ksharp]

For your second question, try SAS/IML code it is in-memory analysis . @Rick_SAS talk about this issue before .

[Kurt_Bremser]

Let us see code examples for the steps that take so much time, there is (almost) always opportunity for performance tuning.

Which unzip program do you use in the X statement?