Category: Dynamics AX

I was recently asked: “What is the most performant way of concatenating strings in AX?”

Traditionally there have been two approaches to build and/or format strings in AX, strFmt and + ing, but you can also leverage the .NET libraries like System.String.Concat and System.Text.StringBuilder.

In this scenario, the goal was to build up a string of a fixed set of elements:

strFmt

str ss = strFmt('Context=%1, Activity=%2, ActivityId=%3, Type=Stop, Tag1=%6, Tag2=%7, Tag3=%8, Tag4=%9', context, activity, activityId, tag1, tag2, tag3, tag4);

+ ing

str ss = 'Context=' + context + ', Activity=' + activity + ', ActivityId=' + activityId + ', Type=Stop, Tag1=' + tag1 + ', Tag2=' + tag2 + ', Tag3=' + tag3 + ', Tag4=' + tag4;

System.String::Concat

System.String s1 = System.String::Concat('Context=', context, ', Activity=', activity);
System.String s2 = System.String::Concat(', ActivityId=', activityId, 'Type=Stop, tag1=%', tag1);
System.String s3 = System.String::Concat(', tag2=', tag2, ', tag3=', tag3);
System.String s4 = System.String::Concat(s2, s3, ', tag4=', tag4);
str s5 = System.String::Concat(s1, s4);

System.Text.StringBuilder

System.Text.StringBuilder sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
   
sb.Append("Context=");
sb.Append(context);
sb.Append(", Activity=");
sb.Append(activity);
sb.Append(", ActivityId=");
sb.Append(activityId);
sb.Append(", Type=Stop, tag1=");
sb.Append(tag1);
sb.Append(", tag2=");
sb.Append(tag2);
sb.Append(", tag3=");
sb.Append(tag3);
sb.Append(", tag4=");
sb.Append(tag4);

str result = sb.ToString();

And the results …

1000000 strFmt took 0.00 milliseconds in average, in total 3398
1000000 +ing took 0.00 milliseconds in average, in total 1843
1000000 System.String::Concat took 0.00 milliseconds in average, in total 655
1000000 System.Text.StringBuilder took 0.00 milliseconds in average, in total 896

        const int cnt = 1000000;

        str context = classStr(ProdInstrumentationActivities);
        str activity = methodStr(ProdInstrumentationActivities, MultiBOMCalculation);
        str activityId = '1';
        str tag1 = menuItemActionStr(AssetAssignBarcode);
        str tag2 = 'sdfaf';
        str tag3 = 'lkjlkjkj';
        str tag4 = 'hhhassd';

        System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch s = System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch::StartNew();

        for (int i = 0; i < cnt; i++)
        {
            str ss = strFmt('Context=%1, Activity=%2, ActivityId=%3, Type=Stop, Tag1=%6, Tag2=%7, Tag3=%8, Tag4=%9', context, activity, activityId, tag1, tag2, tag3, tag4);
        }

        s.Stop();

        info(strFmt('%1 strFmt took %2 milliseconds in average, in total %3', cnt, s.ElapsedMilliseconds/cnt, s.ElapsedMilliseconds));