Introduction In many computing environments, data storage space is a limited resource. Therefore, it might be more important for you to conserve data storage space than to conserve other resources. When you store your data in a SAS data file, you use the sum of the data storage space that is required for the following: the descriptor portion the observations any storage overhead any associated indexes.

In this lesson you learn to use a variety of techniques for minimizing the amount of space that your SAS data files occupy.

This lesson does not cover the Scalable Performance Data Engine (SPD Engine), which is a SAS 9.1 technology for threaded processing. For details about using the SPD Engine to improve performance, see the SAS documentation.

This lesson does not include guided practices. Also, the data sets that are used in examples throughout this lesson are not included in the sample data for this course. Therefore, the programs in this lesson will not run in your SAS session.

1 hour

In this lesson, you learn to describe how SAS stores character variables determine how to reduce the length of character variables and how to expand the values describe how SAS stores numeric variables determine how to safely reduce the space that is required for storing numeric variables in SAS data sets define the structure of a compressed SAS data file create a compressed SAS data file examine the advantages and disadvantages of compression describe the difference between a SAS data file and a SAS data view examine the advantages and disadvantages of DATA step views.

complete the following lessons: . . .