| option | A case sensitive string constant containing the name of the option to set. |
| value | The value to set the option to. This may be any type of value, dependent on what the option expects to be. |
The #OPTION statement is typically a compiler directive giving hints to the code generator as to how best to generate the executable code for a workunit. This statement may be used outside an XML scope and does not require a previous call to the LOADXML function to instantiate an XML scope.
These definitions are "internal-only" terms used in the option definitions that follow.
| DFA | Deterministic Finite-state Automaton. |
| Fold | To turn a complex expression into a simpler equivalent one. For example, the expression "1+1" can be replaced with "2" without altering the result. |
| Spill | Writing intermediate result sets to disk so that memory is available for subsequent steps. |
| Funnel | The + (append file) operator between datasets can be visualized as pouring all the records into a funnel and getting a single stream of records out of the bottom; hence the term "funnel." |
| TopN | An internally generated activity used in place of CHOOSEN(SORT(xx), n) where n is small, as it can be computed much more efficiently than sorting the entire record set then discarding all but the first n. |
| Activity | An ECL operator that takes one or more datasets as inputs. |
| Graph | All the Activities in a query. |
| Subgraph | A collection of Activities that can all be active at the same time in Thor. |
| Peephole | A method of code optimization that looks at a small amount of the unoptimized code at a time, in order to combine operations into more efficient ones. |