bcquality/microsoft/knowledge/performance/use-setloadfields-for-partial-records.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

1.3 KiB

bc-version domain keywords technologies countries application-area
all
performance
setloadfields
partial-record
blob
bandwidth
al
w1
all

Use SetLoadFields for partial records

Description

SetLoadFields instructs the platform to hydrate only the listed fields on a record variable. On wide tables, or tables with BLOB or media fields, the difference is substantial: a Sales Invoice Line has dozens of fields and loading all of them for every row of a large set is wasted bandwidth. Primary key fields, SystemId, and system audit fields are always loaded automatically. SetLoadFields works only with FieldClass = Normal; FlowFields and FlowFilters cannot be partial-loaded.

Best Practice

Call SetLoadFields before FindSet, FindFirst, or Get whenever the code path only reads a subset of fields. List every field that is read during the operation, including fields used in filters, calculations, and downstream function calls. Omitting a field that is later accessed triggers a second round-trip.

See sample: use-setloadfields-for-partial-records.good.al.

Anti Pattern

Iterating a large set and reading only two or three fields without SetLoadFields forces the platform to transport every column for every row, including BLOBs and unused text fields.

See sample: use-setloadfields-for-partial-records.bad.al.