Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Progress 4GL Handbook

Configuring your session using startup options

Progress supports a large number of startup options that you can use, among other things, to tune the configuration of your session, controlling memory allocation for various purposes and other important factors that can have a large effect on performance. A detailed discussion of these is beyond the scope of this book, but this section mentions a few key ones.

Using the -q startup option

The Quick Request (-q) option avoids constant file lookups to determine if a previously loaded .r file needs to be replaced in memory by a newer one. If you specify –q, then the Propath search is done only once, on the initial load of the .r and not on every invocation of it. You should always use the –q option except when you are in development mode and regularly changing and compiling application procedures.

Increasing the –Bt startup option size

The -Bt startup option sets the buffer size for temporary tables. The default value is very small, only 10 buffers. Increasing the buffer size to 100 or more can be useful.

Increasing the –Mm startup option size

In client/server environments, increasing the maximum size of the buffers used for network messages allows more data per message to be sent. This is especially beneficial when reading groups of records with NO-LOCK. The size is a maximum and smaller messages are sent when there is not enough to completely fill the buffer. The default size is 1024 bytes. Increase it to 16384. Not that the same size must be specified on both the client and server side, and that the server allocates message buffers for each client. Large buffers consume more server memory. The increase on the client side is not significant.