What affects the performance of the SAS dataset more - the number of observations or the number of variables?

Question

After working with different data sets in SAS for a month or two, it seems to me that the more variables a data set has, the more time it takes to start PROC and other data set operations. However, if I have, for example, 5 variables, but 1 million observations, the performance is not much affected.

While I'm interested in whether observations or variables affect performance, I was also wondering if there are other factors that I am missing when considering SAS performance?

Thanks!

Answer 1

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options fullstimer;
data a;
    retain var1-var10000 1;
run;
data b(drop=i);
    do i=1 to 10000;
    var1=i;
    output;
    end;
run;

31   options fullstimer;
32   data a;
33       retain var1-var10000 1;
34   run;

NOTE: The data set WORK.A has 1 observations and 10000 variables.
NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
      real time           0.23 seconds
      user cpu time       0.20 seconds
      system cpu time     0.03 seconds
      Memory                            5382k
      OS Memory                         14208k
      Timestamp            10/14/2009  2:03:57 PM


35   data b(drop=i);
36       do i=1 to 10000;
37       var1=i;
38       output;
39       end;
40   run;

NOTE: The data set WORK.B has 10000 observations and 1 variables.
NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
      real time           0.01 seconds
      user cpu time       0.00 seconds
      system cpu time     0.01 seconds
      Memory                            173k
      OS Memory                         12144k
      Timestamp            10/14/2009  2:03:57 PM

BUFNO = BUFSIZE =. , SASFILE, .

Answer 2

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, , - .

SAS:

data foo(compress=yes);
...
run;