Why does my sas language program run more slowly than expected?
Altair EmployeeWhen a sas language program is running more slowly than expected you can use the FULLSTIMER system option to get additional information in the SLC Log that will help you understand where the bottlenecks are occurring.
If you want to compare the speed in SLC with the speed of the same script in another SAS compiler or another version of SLC then you will need logs from the two systems, with FULLSTIMER enabled, so that you can compare the two logs, e.g. using a text editor or a utility like BeyondCompare, that can provide side-by-side compare.
1. Add these lines at the top of the sas language program:
OPTIONS FULLSTIMER;
PROC OPTIONS; RUN;
2. Run the program from start-to-end in both systems, with identical start conditions and the same data.
3. Compare the two logs side-by-side.
Now you can see which steps take more/less time in cpu time and in elapsed time, and you can understand the system resource usage that may be affecting the timings.
The comparison of the 'PROC OPTIONS' outputs may reveal that the two systems are running with different settings that need to be adjusted.
The comparison may reveal that there is a significant difference in the hardware, network, memory, disks, or other system components that can affect performance.
(n.b. Altair does not provide any benchmark figures for the expected performance of SLC on any particular hardware.)