bcquality/community/knowledge/performance/choose-maintainsiftindex-by-read-write-ratio.md
Jeremy Vyska 47a189e61c Seed community performance and security knowledge
Ports 14 concern-sized articles (8 performance, 6 security) and 25
AL samples from BC Code Intelligence, restructured to BCQuality's v1
schema and layered under /community/knowledge/. Each article is
atomic, under 100 lines, and ships <slug>.good.al and (where the
pattern has a clear anti-example) <slug>.bad.al siblings.

Jesper's microsoft-layer leaves (al-performance-review and
al-security-review) source across every enabled layer via
*/knowledge/<domain>/**, so these additions are picked up by the
existing action skills without any new skill definitions.

Performance (8):
  - use-deleteall-for-filtered-bulk-deletion
  - call-setloadfields-before-filters
  - load-common-fields-before-branching-on-case
  - load-only-primary-key-fields-for-reference-work
  - omit-filter-only-fields-from-setloadfields
  - choose-maintainsiftindex-by-read-write-ratio
  - avoid-growing-globals-in-singleinstance-subscribers
  - order-case-branches-by-frequency

Security (6):
  - classify-every-field-with-dataclassification
  - protect-sensitive-data-in-temporary-tables
  - guard-bulk-operations-with-istemporary
  - compose-permission-sets-with-included-sets
  - do-not-grant-rights-beyond-a-users-entitlement
  - prefer-oauth2-over-api-keys-for-external-http-calls

Graveyard-bound items (not ported; to be captured in a later
/docs/triage-graveyard.md):
  - testfield-performance (soft guidance, low actionability)
  - table-event-batch-operation-impact (keep-event-subscribers-lightweight
    already carries the core insight)
  - Most of /roger-reviewer (AL formatting - frontier-model territory)
  - sift-technology-fundamentals (descriptive, not a citable concern)
  - bc-telemetry-buddy-* (tooling promotion, not guidance)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-19 18:13:32 +02:00

26 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown

---
bc-version: [26..28]
domain: performance
keywords: [maintainsiftindex, sift, calcsums, flowfield, write-cost]
technologies: [al]
countries: [w1]
application-area: [all]
---
# Choose MaintainSIFTIndex by read-write ratio
> **Seed article.** Ported from BC Code Intelligence to seed the community corpus. Community contributors are invited to expand or refine.
## Description
`MaintainSIFTIndex` on a key decides whether the SIFT aggregate structure is updated on every `INSERT`, `MODIFY`, and `DELETE` that touches the key's fields. With `Yes`, `CalcSums` and FlowField reads are immediate — but every write pays the cost of updating the aggregate. With `No`, writes are cheaper but the first aggregate read after a change has to rebuild. Neither value is universally correct; the right choice depends on how often the aggregate is read versus how often the underlying rows are written.
## Best Practice
Measure read-to-write ratios for the key's SIFT fields under realistic workloads. Set `MaintainSIFTIndex = Yes` only on keys whose aggregates are read far more often than the rows are written (reporting keys on reference tables, dashboards). Set `No` on keys whose rows are written heavily and whose aggregates are read rarely (transactional ledger entries, import-staging tables).
See sample: `choose-maintainsiftindex-by-read-write-ratio.good.al`.
## Anti Pattern
Leaving `MaintainSIFTIndex = Yes` on every key by reflex or convenience. On write-heavy tables the cumulative cost turns every INSERT or MODIFY into several additional aggregate updates, and the impact compounds in batch imports and posting routines — often without any code-review signal that the property is the cause.