proc sort large table

[Astounding]

Are you able to post the actual log (not just the notes on the log) from the test you ran?  

I understand you may not be able to do that because of confidentiality reasons, but post what you can.

[Astounding]

Get rid of TAGSORT!
You only have 16 variables in the data set, and you need 13 of those as BY variables. So TAGSORT saves reading 3 variables but adds the need to pass through the data twice. As long as the sorting actually completes, removing TAGSORT should speed things up.

[mariopellegrini]

even without TAGSORT the performance doesn't change much. even a little worse with the compressed dataset

[Astounding]

Wow!  Thank you for testing it.

That is so counter-intuitive (at least to me), that I wanted to confirm.  Was the test that you performed along these lines?

proc sort data=_16_variables out=test1;
   by list of _13_ variables;
run;

proc sort data=_16_variables out=test2 tagsort;
   by list of _13_ variables;
run;