the topic is getting out of hand... ( 40 posts, it looks like one of the longer topic around )
most probably will be locked shortly and delete after a while ...
no reason to clutter the forum with such a useless back and forth of useless info
Joined: 09 Mar 2011 Posts: 7309 Location: Inside the Matrix
Are you sure you don't have records of less than 1008 bytes? I don't know what that would do (maybe just an A message from Syncsort), so it is a stab. A joinkeys uses more storage than a norrmal sort, because each of the joinkeys is a sub-task to the main task. You've been coy about your EXEC card, but do you have a REGION=0M around anywhere?
Triple-check everything. If still nothing, take it to your support. If they get nowhere. take it to Syncsort.