Since Method 2 uses USING and GIVING rather than INPUT and OUTPUT PROCEDUREs, FASTSRT is in effect. In addition, by eliminating the overhead related to passing each record between DFSORT and the user exits, and enabling DFSORT to use its highly optimized editing code, Method 2 achieves significant performance gains in CPU time, elapsed time, and EXCPs compared to Method 1. Figure 1 shows a performance comparison between Method 1 and Method 2.

Figure 1. Method 1 versus Method 2 Performance Comparison