If you need to create multiple output data sets from the same input data set, you can use OUTFIL to read the input data set only once, thus improving performance. OUTFIL can be used for sort, merge, and copy applications to provide sophisticated filtering, editing, conversion, lookup and replace, and report features.

If you are creating only a single output data set and do not need the features of OUTFIL, use SORTOUT rather than OUTFIL for best performance.