How to improve Fileshare performance with blocking? NetExpress 5.0 and later

Problem:

Fileshare blocking is a new feature in NetExpress 5.0 which allows the client to read up to 64K records in a single operation, which should improve sequential file access.  How to use the feature?

Resolution:

File must be open input (read access only) by all users or this technique is not applicable.

In FHREDIR.CFG, add the following line:

/bl n

where n is a number, such as 100, which is the number of records to read ahead.  Concrete example:

/bl 100

Acceptable value range is 1 to 65535.

Note: the maximum amount of data that can be read in one block is 64K, which would be a combination of the number of records, and the record length.

Too small a record count will fail to improve performance.  Too large a record count will waste time and memory bringing in more data than is actually in the file or more data than the program will actually use.