Re: OVRDBF in ILE (was: diff btw Procedures and Routines)

[Scott Klement <klemscot@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Keith Carpenter wrote:
>
> *CALLER is fine, but you might want to try using a named activation group
> instead of *NEW.  Unless you're using C (static initialization issue) or
> need recursion, you can avoid the overhead of creating new activation groups
> and might see a performance improvement.
>

I GREATLY prefer the use of *NEW/*CALLER.   It is MUCH easier to manage.
You won't see ANY performance enhancement to using named groups unless
you're using *NEW in a silly fashion.

It takes the same amount of time to create an activation group, whether
you're using *NEW or whether you're using a named group.   The *NEW method
has the big advantage that it is automatically cleaned up...  a bug in
a program won't (likely) prevent it from being reclaimed.  You won't have
to worry about two applications on your system "accidentally" using the
same activation group name if you use *NEW.

The only advantage of using a named activation group is that if someone
does something silly, like calling the program in a loop, it will use
the existing activation group.   However, it's my opinion that any time
you want to call something in a loop, or any other time that you want to
run in the existing activation group, you should be using *CALLER.  That's
what it's for!!