Hi Bill

A raw .prg UDF is faster than a method of a class.

>I want to ship compiled code to be used with a desk top exe. The procecures are created from tabular data. -- case statements based on logic that must be evaluated sequentially -- Since the rules are based on many different variables, the determination of a result is not as simple as a single or even multi key lookup. I created an fxp file that produced a huge preformance improvement. Now it isseven times faster than a looping structure that sequentially evaluates sets of rules. The rules are produced in a 5 table join. Now I am able to do the joins in the creation of the fxp rather than at runtime. I think speed also results from logic evaluation in the compiled code rather than through parsing of words in the case statements.
>
>Now I'm wondering what is the best suggestion for accessing the code at runtime. I may not be able to get the code included in the exe and the application doesn't use a container (no stored procedures). It seems that there are 6 options. What are the pros and cons?
>
>1. Set procedure to the fxp. Nested cases.
>2. Set procedure to the fxp. Many Procs within the fxp.
>3. Create a prg-based class with many methods.
>4. Create a vcx with many classes? (Having trouble with this because when I run the following code, the class is not recognized when I try to instantiate it.
>
>(xxxproc is the foxpro code
>propstring is a list of properties)
>
>thisclass = "xyz"
>CREATE CLASS &thisclass OF carcalc as "Custom"
>USE carcalc.vcx
>LOCATE for objname = thisclass AND baseclass ="custom"
>REPLACE methods with xxxproc,PROPERTIES WITH PROPSTRING,RESERVED1 WITH "Class",Reserved1 WITH "1"
>
>5. Execscript on memo fields.
>6. Put compiled code in memo fields,write to file, and execute.
>
>The VCX seems like a good place to put the code. I would probably eliminate the readable code and ship only the compiled code. I just can't get the right method to make it.