Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 12:15:08 +0000
Reply-To: Ari Toikka <toikkari@yahoo.co.uk>
Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: Ari Toikka <toikkari@YAHOO.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: PC SAS vs. Mainframe SAS
In-Reply-To: <1158333417.201873.149450@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Hi Eric,
we used to have SAS on mainframe, but have gotten
rid of mainframe SAS last year. We had begun moving to windows/unix environment
8 years earlier.
The evolution of hardware has been much more rapid in the
open environment. Because of that you can execute jobs even on a pc
that you might earlier have done only on the mainframe, and you don't
have to pay anything for the cpu seconds.
I did a comparison between the unix (aix) environment and the
mainframe. The unix box was 15 times as powerful as the mainframe,
because it had 4 processors each being more powerful than the mainframe
processor. In spite of that the licencing costs were bigger on the mainframe.
And the unix box was dedicated to SAS only, so you didn't have to share
it with users of other software. The mainframe was fairly good only in very I/O intensive
jobs.
We had to move all the SAS libraries on the mainframe to unix /windows environment,
but the usual mainframe files can still be easily read and written with SAS through FTP either
from unix or windows environment.
The program and data files must of course never be contained on a pc, but somewhere
they are back-up-copied regularly and where they can be reached only by persons having
the rights for that, either on a file server or on the unix box.
Ari Toikka
Statistics Finland
----- Original Message ----
From: elsolo <elsolo21@YAHOO.COM>
To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Sent: Friday, 15 September, 2006 6:16:57 PM
Subject: PC SAS vs. Mainframe SAS
We currently use SAS on a mainframe running z/os. We are contemplating
moving to the SAS for Windows version. I'm trying to put together a
list of pros and cons.
For pros, I have simple things such as: Friendly user interface,
better reporting directly from sas, easier to export files, easier to
automate projects.
For Cons I have obvious things such we already have software that works
and SAS for windows is expensive.
What I'm trying to figure out is how much of a drain the windows
version puts on your workstation. Right now, since everything is on
the mainframe, there is no drag at all on my pc. If we move to the
windows version, all the data will still be on the mainframe but will
SAS drag down my computer while processing the information from the
mainframe?
I'm also trying to see if running programs on the mainframe is faster
than running it on the PC. I saw some threads for that and saw that it
can vary based on mainframe resources, etc. I'm not sure if anyone
can really help me there.
If anyone has any input on either the workstation drain from PC SAS or
anything else I've listed, I'd really like to get that.
Thanks for your reply.
-Eric
