When this COBOL system reads a record that is locked by another user, the record data is returned to the program together with a COBOL file status of 9/068 ("Record locked").
With Btrieve, if a record is locked, the data is not returned and so reading a locked record requires multiple calls to the Btrieve run-time system, making default record reading slower.
You can improve the speed of read operations by:
When you do this, calls to the Btrieve run-time system to detect record locks are not required because the file is locked exclusively and so individual records do not need to be checked
If this directive is set no calls are made to the Btrieve run-time system to see if the record is locked by another user
When you access a Btrieve file from a transaction, a temporary exclusive lock is obtained on the file and so calls to the Btrieve run-time system to detect record locks are not required