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Shraddha Kulkarni
Shraddha Kulkarni

Reputation: 31

What is the maximum size of the file that SAS can read at a time?

What is the max file size that SAS software can successfully read. (without considering hardware limit)

Thanks in advance.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 10274

Answers (4)

Joe
Joe

Reputation: 63424

Reading from a text file, you are limited by the OS typically. Windows allows 1 million characters wide, for example, although SAS can theoretically handle a lrecl of over that.

In general, if you're asking about observations, you will be disk space limited before you are limited by anything else. I've seen a file created that were denominated in PB (petabytes, or 1 thousand terabytes) when on a compressed volume.

Upvotes: 0

Allan Bowe
Allan Bowe

Reputation: 12691

Depends on HOW you read the file. If loading a hash table for instance, you are limited by memory.. If you are reading via a set or infile statement, with no or limited size output dataset, you are limited by the 'uptime' of your process - eg if / when you are forcibly logged off, or become disconnected from whatever you are reading.

Also, some datasets (eg with a large number of columns) may be impossible to read, as cannot load all the variables into the PDV due to memory limits. Again, this is an OS limitation and not SAS.

Upvotes: 1

BellevueBob
BellevueBob

Reputation: 9618

To quote a recently running TV commercial, the answer is "infinity plus 1".

SAS does not have any limitation on the size of a file during read operations, although it's possible you might run into a limit on the number of observations written to a new SAS data set. On a 64-bit system, that would be 2**63-1, about 9.2 quintillion observations. You are more likely to run out of disk space.

Upvotes: 5

Skyler
Skyler

Reputation: 170

"The maximum size of a SAS data set in a Direct Access Bound Library is limited by the maximum size of the library, which is about 2986 GB on 3390 volumes."

http://support.sas.com/kb/8/213.html

Upvotes: 3

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