bcquality/community/knowledge/performance/load-common-fields-before-branching-on-case.md
Jesper Schulz-Wedde 9a4198eb28 Add [all] sentinel to bc-version; apply to version-agnostic knowledge
Most of the corpus — FindSet/SetLoadFields/CalcFields patterns, permission
sets, SingleInstance codeunits, DataClassification, IsolatedStorage,
transaction scope, SecretText — describes BC platform behaviour that is
identical across supported versions. The seed [26..28] range on every
file implied a version-specificity the content does not actually have,
and there was no way to express "applies to every version" in the
schema the way [w1] and [all] already do for countries and
application-area.

Extend the v1 schema with a universal sentinel for bc-version, parallel
to the sentinels already defined for the other dimensions:

  bc-version: [all]         # applies to every BC version

[all] is mutually exclusive with explicit versions. Range shorthand
([26..28]) and explicit lists ([26, 27, 28]) continue to work for files
genuinely tied to a version-gated API or deprecation.

Update read.md (field definition, matching semantics, partial-context
rule), write.md (default to [all], use ranges only with a concrete
reason), README.md (frontmatter example), and the CI validator. All
forty existing knowledge files and the three action skills convert to
[all]; none of the current content is version-gated. Validator passes.
2026-04-23 16:00:03 +02:00

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Markdown

---
bc-version: [all]
domain: performance
keywords: [setloadfields, case, conditional, branch, field-loading]
technologies: [al]
countries: [w1]
application-area: [all]
---
# Load common fields before branching on case
> **Seed article.** Ported from BC Code Intelligence to seed the community corpus. Community contributors are invited to expand or refine.
## Description
When record processing branches on state, different branches typically read different fields. A single `SetLoadFields` at the top listing every field any branch might touch pulls more data than any individual execution path needs — on the hot path, the rest is loaded for nothing. A two-tier approach matches loading to actual usage: load the fields the `case` expression evaluates plus any fields every branch uses, then add a branch-local `SetLoadFields` inside each branch for that branch's extra fields.
## Best Practice
Before the `case`, call `SetLoadFields` with the minimal set — the discriminator field and fields common to every branch. Inside each branch, before the first access to a branch-specific field, add a second `SetLoadFields` covering those fields. The platform honors the in-branch call for the next record operation, so the extra data is fetched only when the branch runs.
See sample: `load-common-fields-before-branching-on-case.good.al`.
## Anti Pattern
A single top-level `SetLoadFields` enumerating every field any branch might read. On records whose state routes them to the fast common branch, the rarely-needed fields are still loaded — the optimization becomes a net-neutral or net-negative change on the hot path.
See sample: `load-common-fields-before-branching-on-case.bad.al`.