A_MSSQL_FAST_ACCESS

A_MSSQL_FAST_ACCESS is set from your COBOL program. Files opened while this variable is set to a nonzero value are optimized for forward sequential access.

This option improves the READ NEXT performance in some cases. For example, benchmark testing yielded the following results for the READ AND SKIP operation:

No FAST_ACCESS: 72.76 seconds
FAST_ACCESS, ROWCOUNT 0: 148.88 seconds
FAST_ACCESS, ROWCOUNT 10:     8.09 seconds

(10 is the perfect value for ROWCOUNT in this benchmark, because the program does a START, 10 READ NEXT operations, and then does it again.)

For certain reporting programs, this option can dramatically improve performance. However, please note the following restrictions:

There are no restrictions on WRITE, REWRITE, and DELETE. However, these operations use the cursor-based connection, not the dedicated connection. For this reason, transactions may stop responding.

While the default value is 0 (off, false, no), this variable can also take values of On (true, yes).