SAS on Solaris - Large File Support

Creating SAS Data Sets Larger than 2 Gigabytes on Solaris

One of the new features of the SAS System, Release 6.12, is the ability for the SAS System to create SAS data sets greater than 2 gigabytes in size by dividing the file into partitions or natively create a SAS data set greater than 2 gigabytes.

Using the Partitions Method:

For Release 6.12, the SAS System can create SAS data sets greater than 2 gigabytes by logically grouping several files together and maintaining them as if they were a single file. These file partitions will typically be spread out over several directories in different file systems. File partitioning is done in a given SAS library for all data sets, indexes, catalogs, and views.

No special parameters are needed upon the invocation of the SAS System, you simply need to add a couple of parameters to your LIBNAME statement:

libname lname ('path1 '[, 'path2']) type=partition [partsize=size];

 The paths may be either  Solaris directory names or previously declared libnames, including other partitioned libnames. If partsize (the size at which to split files) is omitted, a default value of 500M will be used. The size can be specified in kilobytes (K), megabytes (M), or gigabytes (G) and must be set as a whole number.

If you would like to partition the WORK library, you must enclose the directory pathname(s) in parentheses, even if all partitions are in a single directory. The directories you specify with the WORK option must already exist.

Supporting Large Files Natively:

With Solaris 2.6, you can now support native files larger than 2 gigabytes provided you have the SAS largefiles patch available from SAS Technical Support. To enable large files support for a SAS session, specify -LARGEFILE sasvlfs either as a parameter on the SAS command or add it to your SAS configuration file.  With Solaris 2.6, large file support is supported by default via UFS or NFS file systems. Refer to the Solaris documentation for more information on large file support administration and/or man page sections mount(1M), newfs(1M), mount_ufs(1M), largefile(5).

NOTE: Most of the SAS procedures do support the creation of output data sets greater than 2 gigabytes. The two we know that can not produce files greater than 2 gigabytes are PROC MDDB and PROC SQL when joining two files that create a SAS data set greater than 2 gigabytes.
Additionally, prior to the SAS 6.12 Fall '97 maintenance release, there is a problem where utility work files cannot exceed 2GB in size.

Copyright (c) 2000 SAS Institute Inc. Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.
Date last modified: Wed Jan 12, 2000 19:41 UT