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Focal Point    Focal Point Forums  Hop To Forum Categories  WebFOCUS/FOCUS Forum on Focal Point     which is more efficient -- contains or sbstr?

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which is more efficient -- contains or sbstr?
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JohnB
Platinum Member
posted
I have to test for the first character of an alpha field. Which is more efficient in this case:

IF (SUBSTR(255, STMTURL, 1, 255, 1, 'A225V') EQ '<') THEN 1 ELSE 0;

OR

IF STMTURL CONTAINS '<' THEN 1 ELSE 0;


1. I was thinking CONTAINS because since we're testing for the first character, it doesn't have to parse and process the SUBSTR syntax.

2. Would SUBSTR be more efficient if we were testing for, say, the 100th character?


Thank you,

John


WF 7.7.03, Windows 7, HTML, Excel, PDF
 
Posts: 225 | Location: San Francisco Bay Area, California | Registered: October 26, 2006Report This Post
Darin Lee
Virtuoso
posted Hide Post
Here a couple that may work as well--

1. IF EDIT(STMTURL,'9') EQ '<'

OR

2. IF STMTURL LIKE '<%'

OR

3. IF STMTURL EQ '<$*'
(This one won't work if STMTURL length is shorter than 3 characters - give a "Test value is longer than the field length" error.

I believe that any of these would be very efficient and very simple. I don't think CONTAINS can be passed to the DBMS.


Regards,

Darin


In FOCUS since 1991
WF Server: 7.7.04 on Linux and Z/OS, ReportCaster, Self-Service, MRE, Java, Flex
Data: DB2/UDB, Adabas, SQL Server Output: HTML,PDF,EXL2K/07, PS, AHTML, Flex
WF Client: 77 on Linux w/Tomcat
 
Posts: 2298 | Location: Salt Lake City, Utah | Registered: February 02, 2007Report This Post
FrankDutch
Virtuoso
posted Hide Post
In my experience the SUBSTR formula is more efficient because you point direct to the proper part of the field, the CONTAINS command tests every character in the field for the wanted value.




Frank
prod: WF 7.6.10 platform Windows,
databases: msSQL2000, msSQL2005, RMS, Oracle, Sybase,IE7
test: WF 7.6.10 on the same platform and databases,IE7

 
Posts: 2387 | Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands | Registered: December 03, 2006Report This Post
JohnB
Platinum Member
posted Hide Post
Hi Frank,

So CONTAINS doesn't stop testing each character after it finds a match?

Thanks,

John


WF 7.7.03, Windows 7, HTML, Excel, PDF
 
Posts: 225 | Location: San Francisco Bay Area, California | Registered: October 26, 2006Report This Post
FrankDutch
Virtuoso
posted Hide Post
It might also depend on the database you use.
A Focus database will act different compared to an SQL db.




Frank
prod: WF 7.6.10 platform Windows,
databases: msSQL2000, msSQL2005, RMS, Oracle, Sybase,IE7
test: WF 7.6.10 on the same platform and databases,IE7

 
Posts: 2387 | Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands | Registered: December 03, 2006Report This Post
FrankDutch
Virtuoso
posted Hide Post
I have no idea John, but it is slower.
If you want to find out just test it on a big database where you know on what position certain values are.




Frank
prod: WF 7.6.10 platform Windows,
databases: msSQL2000, msSQL2005, RMS, Oracle, Sybase,IE7
test: WF 7.6.10 on the same platform and databases,IE7

 
Posts: 2387 | Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands | Registered: December 03, 2006Report This Post
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