David,
Two things come to mind.
First, there have been numerous posts in the past about loading an entire file into memory. I have never done it and don't remember the command but you could probably find something in the archives.
Second, you might consider a user index. It functions like a file but access is faster. Instead of loading into an array load into the user index. As long as you don't exceed the maximum size of an index the number of entries doesn't matter. Check out the user index API's in the IBM documentation web site.
Rick
-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David FOXWELL
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2009 4:22 AM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i
Subject: Array vs file access
Hi all,
We have some old RPGIII that are using arrays instead of files. These programs are used by a lot of different applications and can be called many times by the same program. The programs in question load a file into an array in the INZSR, then each time the program is called, it's the array that is searched instead of the file. Apparently, this is or was supposed to be quicker. The program however, needs to be maintained as eventually the arrays get overfilled as records get added to the file.
Is this kind of thing justified? If not, was it ever?
The boss is saying that it is not, because repeatedly chaining to the same record by different calls to the program would mean that the record would always be available in memory without having to read from disk. I think that's possible, but no way of knowing for sure. When the program was written, only 50 records were in the file. Now there are more than 800.
For now, I'm going to increase the size of the array in the program that's causing problems. I was thinking, however, that this program would be an ideal candidate for our shop's first ever service program, as all our RPGIV do a bound call to this program via an encapsulating program.
Any thoughts?
--
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