Field lists can provide significant performance benefits when:
Browsing over a network — With the reduction in network traffic, tests show that field lists can increase the performance of fetches from both remote OpenEdge and DataServer databases by factors of from 2 to 10, depending on the record size and number of fields in the list.
Fetching from local DataServers — Some local DataServers can yield significant improvements in fetch performance when only a portion of the record is read.
Fetching from remote DataServers that send multiple rows at a time — DataServers that package multiple rows per network message show noticeable performance gains using field list fetches.
In general, these benefits mean that a multi-user query application can handle more network clients when fetching field lists than when fetching whole records. For more information on the availability and benefits of field list fetches with DataServers, see the OpenEdge DataServer guides.
Browsing over a network — With the reduction in network traffic, tests show that field lists can increase the performance of fetches from both remote OpenEdge and DataServer databases by factors of from 2 to 10, depending on the record size and number of fields in the list.