Analysis of High-Performance Sorting Algorithms on AIX for Mainframe Operation Offload

Abstract

Sorting is one of the most critical applications on mainframe machines. In this paper we analyze sorting algorithms on AIX and describe our approach of offloading sorting operations from mainframe systems. A library was developed on AIX to read records from mainframe DASD disks. With this library we are able to analyze the performance of quick sort and radix sort implementations on AIX using mainframe datasets. Our results show that sorting operations can be improved significantly, while the library enables mainframe operation offload to UNIX systems.