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SORTSHRB

Default:	SORTSHRB for all modes except batch; NOSORTSHRB for batch mode
Valid in:	configuration file, SAS invocation, OPTIONS statement, OPTIONS window
Category:	Sort: SORT
OS/390 specifics:	all

SORTSHRB

specifies that two or more tasks are likely to be sharing the data in buffers. If SORTSHRB is in effect, the host sort interface cannot modify data in buffers but must move the data first. This could have a severe performance impact, especially for large sorts.

SORTSHRB is the default value for the windowing environment, interactive line mode, and noninteractive mode, where it is quite likely that multiple tasks will be using the same data.

NOSORTSHRB

specifies that no tasks will be sharing the data in buffers. If NOSORTSHRB is in effect, the host sort interface can modify data in buffers. NOSORTSHRB is the default value for batch mode because it is unlikely that buffers will be shared during batch jobs, where larger sorts are usually run. If this is not suitable for your batch environment, be sure to specify SORTSHRB.

Details

SAS data sets can be opened for input by more than one SAS task (or window). When this happens, the buffers into which the data is read can be shared between the tasks. Because the host sort interface needs to modify the data before passing it to the host sort utility, and by default does this directly to the data in the buffers, data can be corrupted if more than one task is using the data in the buffers.

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