PARASORT improves elapsed time performance for sorts whose input is a multi-volume tape data set and/or concatenated tape data sets. Reduced elapsed time can help critical sort applications achieve batch window goals.
The performance improvement from PARASORT is a result of processing the SORTIN input volumes in a parallel fashion. Depending upon the resources provided, elapsed time can be reduced up to 20% for 2-way input and up to 33% for 4-way input.
PARASORT requires additional tape units for the application. You will need from two to eight times the current number of tape units, depending upon resource availability and the degree of improvement desired. PARASORT automatically manages the tape units and minimizes the use of the tape drive resources by deallocating excess tape drives during initialization and releasing all the extra units at the end of the sort input phase.