Global buffer questions

OK, I start with the second question. I'm not aware of a function to see if a specific global is in a buffer or not but there is a routine which shows which globals are using the most buffers:

znspace "%SYS"
do ^GLOBUFF

For the first question: if a global is used continuously, then it will always be in buffer. That's the simple answer. The reality depends on many other factors: the size of the global, the size of the buffer pool, how many other globals are in use, how often is a global used, etc.

To keep a few specific global(s) always in a buffer, there is a simple trick (assuming, your Cache/IRIS installation uses the default setup and you have an unused block size):

1) Goto SystemAdministration-->Configuration-->AdditionalSettings-->Startup: and edit the DBSizesAllowed setting, by checking one of the 16K or the 32K checkboxes

2) Create a new database with the newly enabled block size. This database will hold those few (always needed) globals.

3) Goto SystemAdministration-->Configuration-->SystemConfiguration-->MemoryAndStartup: and allocate (plenty of) memory for the newly created buffersize. Please consider,  after this chanhe, you have to RESTART your system!

4) Copy the global(s) in question into the newly created database:

  merge ^|"^^c:\path_to_new_database\"|GlobalName = ^|"^^c:\path_to_old_database\"|GlobalName

5) Create a Global mapping for the globals in question to the new location.

6) Start working... If everything is OK (which should be) and you are happy, delete the old global data to free up database space:   

kill merge ^|"^^c:\path_to_old_database\"|GlobalName

7) In a standard installation, you have allocated  one buffer pool (with the standard 8KB buffer size). So all your processes faiting to get the needed globals into that buffer pool.

With the above configuration you have two buffer pools, one for the standard 8KB database blocks and one for the new 16KB (or wahtever size you have choosen) database blocks. So you can keep important globals in a separate buffer pool. If you can manage (this will be application dependent) to give this buffer pool the same size as the database itself, the you will have all data (of this database) in the memory all day long.