OpenEdge supports a large number of startup options that you can use, among other things, to tune the configuration of your session, controlling memory allocation for various purposes and other important factors that can have a large effect on performance. A detailed discussion of these is beyond the scope of this book, but this section mentions a couple key ones.

Use the -q startup option

The Quick Request (-q) option avoids constant file lookups to determine if a previously loaded .r file needs to be replaced in memory by a newer one. If you specify –q, then the Propath search is done only once, on the initial load of the .r and not on every invocation of it. You should always use the –q option except when you are in development mode and regularly changing and compiling application procedures.

Increase the –Mm startup option size

In client/server environments, increasing the maximum size of the buffers used for network messages allows more data per message to be sent. This is especially beneficial when reading groups of records with NO-LOCK. Message Buffer Size (-Mm) is a maximum and smaller messages are sent when there is not enough to completely fill the buffer. Increase it to 16,384. Note that the same size must be specified on both the client and server side, and that the server allocates message buffers for each client. Large buffers consume more server memory. The increase on the client side is not significant.