SAS Certification Prep Guide, 4th Edition

Using the SASFILE Statement

Overview

Another way of improving performance is to use the SASFILE statement to hold a SAS data file in memory so that the data is available to multiple program steps. Keeping the data file open reduces I/O processing and open/close operations, including the allocation and freeing of memory for buffers.

General form, SASFILE statement: SASFILE SAS-data-file <(password-option(s))> OPEN | LOAD | CLOSE; Here is an explanation of the syntax: SAS-data-file is a valid SAS data file (a SAS data set with the member type DATA). password-option(s) specifies one or more password options. OPEN opens the file and allocates the buffers, but defers reading the data into memory until a procedure or statement is ...