In general, the more main storage you make available to DFSORT, the better the performance for large applications. To prevent excessive paging, ensure that sufficient real storage is available to back up the amount of main storage used. This is especially important with main storage sizes greater than 32MB. The default amount of main storage that will be made available to DFSORT is defined when it is installed.

Although it is possible to run a "very minimal" sort application in 88KB of storage, the actual minimum amount of storage required is generally 128KB to 440KB depending on the application. However, 4MB or more of storage is recommended for better performance. Improved performance will be most noticeable with large input files. With MAINSIZE=MAX, the DSA value can be used to automatically increase the amount of storage DFSORT uses for a sort application when doing so should improve performance.