Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Progress 4GL Handbook

Using a temp-table as a parameter

There are several different ways you can pass a temp-table as a parameter between two routines. (For the purposes of this discussion, routine is a generic term that includes external procedures, internal procedures, and user-defined-functions.) It is important that you understand the differences between these ways of passing parameters, because what Progress does in the background to pass a temp-table from one place to another is complex and involves a considerable amount of overhead that is not visible to your application code directly. After all, a temp-table isn’t just a single data value. It’s a whole set of rows of data values, packaged up as if it were a database table. Not only that, but Progress can pass the entire description of the table along with the data, and it is critical to understand when you need to include the description and what the benefits are.