bcquality/microsoft/knowledge/performance/avoid-user-interaction-in-transactions.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

1.2 KiB

bc-version domain keywords technologies countries application-area
all
performance
confirm
strmenu
message
transaction
dialog
al
w1
all

Do not prompt the user inside a write transaction

Seed article. Converted from an existing performance-review prompt to bootstrap the BCQuality performance corpus. Domain stewards should expand, restructure, and refine as needed.

Description

Confirm, StrMenu, Message, and any other user-facing dialog pauses execution while the transaction is still open. During that pause every lock held by the transaction blocks other sessions. A user who walks away from the screen can suspend business-critical tables for an unbounded period.

Best Practice

Gather every user decision before the writing phase begins. Once the decisions are known, run the transaction end-to-end without prompts.

See sample: avoid-user-interaction-in-transactions.good.al.

Anti Pattern

Calling Confirm or StrMenu from inside an OnInsert, OnModify, or OnDelete trigger — or from any code path that has already started modifying records — blocks on user input while holding locks.

See sample: avoid-user-interaction-in-transactions.bad.al.