Pitfalls/problems with using UDFs

[tbtcust]

Hi all,

We have a new udb database that is storing record as a blob in a table. There are multiple record types and multiple versions of each record type stored.

At query time, each blobs needs to be parsed out. The parsing will be driven by the record type and version. My development team is proposing using UDFs to do this parsing at query time.

What are some of the pitfalls/problems with using UDFs? I have not use them so any opinions from real world experiences would be greatly appreciated.

 

[fredericofonseca]

bad design is first thing i think of.

Using udfs will mean that every time you need to search for a particular record(s) within the blobs you will be doing a table scan.




Regards

Frederico Fonseca
SysSoft Integrated Ltd

http://www.syssoft-int.com

 

[tbtcust]

Wow this will be a big big deal for us. Thanks Frederico.

Frederico, do have any experience managing UDFs in a change control tool? There will be dozens of UDFs and I wounding how do you keep track of them all. Also, wounding how to roll a UDF back to a previous version.