Performance Best Practices for Web Service Implementations

Here are some best practices for optimal performance when working with web services.

Groovy Script

Use the Groovy script to call an external web service to sync data on creating a record in the application.

A "before update" trigger to call an external web service to sync data is a time-consuming process. The entire commit must wait for the web service response, impacting the total runtime performance.

Instead of doing this with triggers, you can write an Object Workflow that calls a groovy on the update of a record and syncs to the external system. This asynchronous method of syncing data with the external system will reduce the UI overhead.

REST/SOAP

You can set a field value to NULL using web services. This example will set a Text_c field value to null, even if it had a previously entered value:<ns2:Text_c> </ns2:Text_c>

REST – Fetching Fields

Blind fetch fields in REST web services will bring all fields with them. For better performance, you should limit the number of fields that are included in the response by adding filters. Here are some examples of filters you can use.

Examples of Filters

Use Case	Solution
Query to return only specific fields	`?fields=Attribute1,Attribute2` Format for fields in child resource: `?fields=Accessor1:Attribute1,Attribute2`
Query to return only data and no links	`?onlyData`
Sort the result returned by Query	`?orderBy=field1:asc,field2:desc`
Filtering the records on a generic expression	`?q=expression1`
Filter records within a specific date range	To extract records filtering on the fields of type Date the parameter q= of the url should be: `<Nameofthefield> > YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MI:SS.sss-HH:MM`
Query to fetch records from a specified offset	`?offset=<number>`
Combining multiple conditions with AND effect	`?q=expression1;q=expression2?q= expression1 and expression2`
Combining multiple conditions with OR effect	`?q= expression1 OR expression2` Example: ?q= Type = ECO OR ChangeAnalyst = John Smith
Filtering on check box fields	`?q=checkbox_c=Y?q=checkbox_c=Y`
Skip AND as a Keyword when present in a value	`?q=RecordName%20LIKE%20%27Fin%20And%20Mgmt%27`

REST – Fetching Number of Records

You can use this limit parameter to limit the number of fields that are fetched for a REST call.?limit=<number>If you don't specify a number in this parameter, the limit is set to 25. But you can manually specify a limit value, so it will fetch that many records. The recommended limit value is 499 or lower, to maintain optimal performance. Don't use a higher limit value for fetching records, even if you've a few records, as memory is allocated based on the limit parameter value you set.

Performance Baseline Measurements

Measure the time it takes to render:

Object Edit page
Save and Close flow
Save and Continue flow