SAS Engines Documentation CAS

V9 vs. The World: Choosing the Right SAS Engine for Big Data and Parallel Processing

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Michael

Expert Advice

Michael
Responsable de l'infrastructure Viya.

While engines like CAS and SPDE are built for lightning-fast multi-threaded processing, they handle Random Access (requesting a specific row in the middle of a file) very differently than the traditional V9 engine.

If your code relies heavily on POINT= or KEY= options in the SET statement, stick to the V9 engine or ensure your big data engine is optimized for indexing.

For heavy analytical "full table scans," always pivot to distributed engines like CAS or Parquet-based engines to leverage parallel I/O.

When choosing an engine, the Data Access Pattern is often more important than the storage format.
A detailed analysis of SAS© engines. The V9 (BASE) engine is the default SAS© engine for SAS© datasets. The document presents engines for big data and multi-threaded distributed processing (CAS, SPDE, Parquet, ORC), as well as engines for importing/exporting specific file formats (JSON, XMLV2) and accessing external databases via SAS©/ACCESS. It explains the different data access patterns (sequential, random, BY-group, multiple passes) and locking levels (library, member, record) essential for managing concurrent access and data integrity.

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