SPSS 17 – Java fine tuning

I was asked, recently, whether SPSS can run faster. As you probably know, SPSS has moved development to Java language since release 16. Thanks to SPSS developers it is possible to fine tune Java environment during run time.

You can find

jvmcfg.ini

file inside installation directory. This file contains following section:

; Optional startup parameters go here
; for example, -Xms500
[Startup Parameters]
; Set application home for client facilities
-Dstatistics.home=%SPSS_HOME%
; Set initial (Xms) and maximum (Xmx) Java heap sizes
-Xms512M
-Xmx1024M
-XX:-UsePerfData
-Xrs

In general, it is a good idea to give Java Virtual Machine as much memory as you can. In this case you can change:

-Xms32M
-Xmx256M

to

-Xms512M
-Xmx1024M

After you change these settings, you should notice quite impressive shortage of execution time of the scripts – especially when the data set is huge.