At one site we support, it's been quite successful (now since 2011 time-period in production) with using the MICS / SMF DIRECTOR interface along with the MICS INCREMENTAL UPDATE (INCRUPDT) facility to process RMF, SMF, CICS, DB2 (those large-volume data or popular use) components throughout the day.
Do consider that the MICS typical time-span database files are always available while INCRUPDT is running -- that is sometimes misunderstood.
The primary benefit here is to distribute the MICS "database update" processing throughout the day in increments, rather than expecting all processing to occur during the overnight-batch time-period.
Also, note that SAS 9.4 TS1M5 introduces a DATA step / INFILE processing performance gain, where OPTIONS FILEBUFNO=nn|5 allows sites to increase BUFNO (input/output) processing for dynamically-allocated sequential datasets. Previous to SAS 9.4 TS1M4, the DATA step BUFNO (when dynamically-allocated) forced a BUFNO=5 to be used, which saves REGION while sacrificing DATA step elapsed-time performance.
If interested, I would gladly entertain some back/forth dialog (CA MICS COMMUNITY) posts here.....for that matter on any interesting MICS topic, if only to get a good-feeling that there are peer-individuals out there using MICS happily !!
Regards,
Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.