Re: Converting Case with a Varying Field

On 8/21/2012 11:02 PM, Robert Houts wrote:

... That "possibly negligible"
amount of extra processing adds up in a hurry. Our production system
does a lot of work (we wrap the job number every two to three days),
so we need to remove inefficiency wherever we can.
...

You might be able to write those wrapper procedures in a way that they would run faster, in the long run, than direct API calls. For the direct API calls, each caller has to define the additional parameters, and initialize them. (Whether by the INZ keyword or by assignments.) Even if there's no INZ keyword on those variables, they still get initialized even though they might not actually be used.

If that sounds nit-picky, it is. But worrying about a couple of extra bound calls is also nit-picky. Which one outweighs the other depends on the exact nature of the variables and the wrapper parameters and the way the wrapper is written.

I'm thinking that the wrappers could be improved a lot, and not just by using RTNPARM. The wrappers could call the API directly rather than calling through to another procedure. The wrappers could have static variables for the API parameters, that wouldn't need to be initialized on every call. Additional wrappers could be written to avoid having to check the optional parameters. CvtToUpperJob etc.

So, I think with some well-placed programmer effort, you could have both good performance and maintainable code.