Output 28.7 PROC CONTENTS Output Showing List of Extended Attributes
The CONTENTS procedure and the DATASETS procedure produce the following error
when the .sas7bxat (extended attributes) file is absent from the directory and extended
attributes were defined:
ERROR: File libref.dsname_EXT.EXTATTR does not exist.
Compressing Data Files
Definition of Compression
Compressing a file is a process that reduces the number of bytes required to represent
each observation. In a compressed file, each observation is a variable-length record,
while in an uncompressed file, each observation is a fixed-length record.
Advantages of compressing a file include the following:
reduced storage requirements for the file
less
I/O operations necessary to read from or write to the data during processing
There are disadvantages to compressing a file. For example:
More CPU resources are required to read a compressed file because of the overhead
of uncompressing each observation.
672 Chapter 28
SAS Data Files
There are situations when the resulting file size can increase rather than decrease.
Requesting Compression
By default, a SAS data file is not compressed. To compress, you can use these options:
COMPRESS= system option to compress all data files that are created during a SAS
session
COMPRESS= option in the LIBNAME statement to compress all data files for a
particular SAS library
COMPRESS= data set option to compress an individual data file
To compress a data file, you can specify one of the following:
COMPRESS=CHAR to use the RLE (Run Length Encoding) compression algorithm
COMPRESS=BINARY to use the RDC (Ross Data Compression) algorithm
When you create a compressed data file, SAS writes a note to the log indicating the
percentage of reduction that is obtained by compressing the file. SAS obtains the
compression percentage by comparing the size of the compressed file with the size of an
uncompressed file of the same page size and record count.
After a file is compressed, the setting is a permanent attribute of the file. This means that
you must re-create the file to change the setting. That is, to uncompress a file, specify
COMPRESS=NO for a DA
TA step that copies the compressed data file.
For more information about the COMPRESS= data set option, see
SAS Data Set
Options: Refer
ence
. For more information about the COMPRESS= option in the
LIBNAME statement, see SAS DATA Step Statements: Reference. For more information
about the COMPRESS= system option, see SAS System Options: Reference.
Disabling a Compression Request
Compressing a file adds a fixed-length block of data to each observation. Because of the
additional block of data (12 bytes for a 32-bit host and 24 bytes for a 64-bit host per
observation), some files could result in a lar
ger file size. For example, files with
extremely short record lengths could result in a larger file size if compressed.
When a request is made to compress a data set, SAS attempts to determine whether
compression will increase the size of the file. SAS examines the lengths of the variables.
If, due to the number and lengths of the variables, it is not possible for the compressed
file to be at least 12 bytes (for a 32-bit host) or 24 bytes (for a 64-bit host) per
observation smaller than an uncompressed version, compression is disabled and a
message is written to the SAS log.
For example, here is a simple data set for which SAS determines that it is not possible
for the compressed file to be smaller than an uncompressed one:
data one (compress=char);
length x y $2;
input x y;
datalines;
ab cd
;
The following output is written to the SAS log:
Compressing Data Files 673
Log 28.1 SAS Log Output When Compression Request Is Disabled
NOTE: Compression was disabled for data set WORK.ONE because compression
overhead would increase the size of the data set.
NOTE: The data set WORK.ONE has 1 observations and 2 variables.
674 Chapter 28 SAS Data Files

Get SAS 9.4 Language Reference, 6th Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.