PROC COPY OR IBM Utilities

[nkulkarni]

Hi,

I have coded a program to increase space for high potential B37 SAS DB candidates using SAS PROC COPY and it is working fine as expected.

I need to know if there are any other ways which could be more efficient than SAS COPY? Does taking the backup and restoring using ICEGENER be more efficient?

[steve-myers]

There are two, perhaps three elements here.

• Your space analysis in SAS PROC COPY.
• Your query about an efficient copy utility.
• Hiding under the covers, perhaps, is extending your space analysis to the more mainline copy utilities.

Efficient copy utility
There are many relatively common copy utiliities,

• IEBGENER
  IEBGENER is probably the best known copy utility. It usually works and is fairly easy to use. Efficient? Well, to be polite about it, no.
• ICEGENER
  Many people think ICEGENER (or the Syncsort equivalent) are about as efficient as a copy utility can be. They are probably correct.
• IEBCOPY
  IEBCOPY is for partitioned data sets. Partitioned data sets, especially partitioned data sets containing load modules, can be difficult to copy. There are third party alternates to IEBCOPY that claim they are more efficient, but my sense is IEBCOPY is OK.

Extending your space analysis to other copy utilities
All the batch oriented copy utilities use the space specification in a DD statement. This leaves little room to sneak in an improvement.

[nkulkarni]

Thank you steve-myers