This paper discusses couple of interesting options to reduce data set disk storage (compress, reuse options..)
Whenever there are a group of variables to be processed in the data step, it might be well worth considering using arrays to help accomplish the business objective. This paper shows you how to use SAS Arrays
The SAS software contains tools and strategies that reduce or trade off the resources needed to sort data. This tutorial explains these tools, with an emphasis on reducing the amount of sort work space.
This paper discusses seven different approaches to perform the table lookup in terms of processing time and the complexity of coding.
This paper demonstrates the use of indexes to perform table look-up in SAS DATA Step
Table Look-up comparison with Indexes, SQL, Arrays, and Formats.
Table Look-up comparison with proc sql, merge, arrays, formats, hash, SET Key=