Performance tuning involves measuring, evaluating, and modifying a query’s execution to achieve an optimal balance between competing computer resources (see section 10.2).

Avoid specifying an ORDER BY clause when creating a table or view (see section 10.3).

When sorting is necessary, specify the SORTPGM= system option to instruct the SAS System to use the best possible sort utility relative to the size of the database environment (see section 10.3.1).

Care should be exercised to assign indexes to only those discriminating variables in a table and to avoid creating too many indexes (see section 10.5).

There is no advantage in creating or using an index when a table is relatively small (usually fewer than three pages) (see section 10.6).

Setting the MSGLEVEL= system option to “I” allows the SAS System to display vital information (if available) relative to the presence of one or more indexes for optimization of WHERE clause processing (see section 10.6).

Apply WHERE clause processing to restrict the number of rows of the result table (see section 10.7).

When constructing a chain of AND conditions in a WHERE clause, specify the most restrictive conditional values first (see section 10.7.1).