I am wondering what the best (read: fastest) way is to locate a record in a resultset of a Tquery SQL statement.
Until now i'm using TQuery.Locate and if i'm right that is the only statement that can be used to search in the resultset. So how can we optimize this?
I have a few ideas, but haven't had the time yet to compare them all on large datasets:
Let say we have a table with the following fields:
Create Table aTable (
ID int,
Name1 varchar(50),
Name2 varchar(50));
And the following query:
SELECT ID, Name1, Name2 from aTable
We want to locate a record by its ID in the resulting set
- Will a locate be faster if aTable has an index on ID?
- Will a locate be faster if I add "Order By ID" to the SQL statement?
Any ideas on this?
[Edit] To clarify the use of this: The query is executed by a Reportbuilder Dataview, and then made available through a datapipeline (which is the TQuery.Dataset). In the custom report I need to travel the pipeline based on some higher level ID. So NOT using a query is not applicable here. I'm just wondering if any of my suggestions above would speed things up.
Here are some tips that you might find helpful
- Use Locate() method only on indexed columns
- Use "order by" ONLY on indexed columns
- Use prepare before opening query
- Use DisableControls / EnableControls
- Use Ascending / Descending index (or both) depending on your needs
- Give a try to FastReports
If you have master / detail on large datasets DO NOT fetch all details record - in other words - don't use local master detail - let the DB engine gives you only the desired records.
If you need to do this very often on a large dataset you will be better of converting the dataset to an record array and implement some custom search routines on the index field.
You should add an ID to search for, in order to retrieve only the expected row.
In the ReportBuilder Data view, go to the Query Designer, then to the Search tab, then add a field setting with the "Auto search" option.
Then go to the ReportBuilder Calc view, select "View / Events" from the menu. Click on the Report root item in the "Report object" tree view, then double-click on "OnGetAutoSearchValues" and retrieve the expected value:
var
Fld : TppAutoSearchField;
i : integer;
begin
for i:=0 to Report.AutoSearchFieldCount-1 do
begin
Fld := Report.AutoSearchFields[i];
if Fld<>nil then
begin
if (Fld.FieldName='FIRST_PARAM') then
begin
Fld.SearchExpression := .....;
end
else if (uppercase(Fld.FieldName)='2ND_PARAM') then
begin
Fld.SearchExpression := intToStr(...);
end;
end;
end;
end;