bcquality/microsoft/knowledge/performance/prefer-get-for-primary-key-lookups.md
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bc-version domain keywords technologies countries application-area
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performance
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Prefer Get for primary-key lookups

Contributions welcome — open a PR to refine or extend this article.

Description

Get is a direct primary-key lookup: one index seek, one row, done. FindFirst with SetRange on the primary key fields reaches the same row through a more general code path and carries the overhead of filter setup and a broader optimizer decision.

Best Practice

When the complete primary key is known, call Get. Use FindFirst only for non-primary-key lookups or when the filter is a partial prefix of the key.

See sample: prefer-get-for-primary-key-lookups.good.al.

Anti Pattern

Setting one SetRange per primary-key field and then calling FindFirst reproduces Get with more typing and slightly worse performance.

See sample: prefer-get-for-primary-key-lookups.bad.al.