Bring out the difference in usage of StringBuilder and StringBuffer

[vadimklimov]

Issue description

The documentation contains the following recommendations:

Don't use string objects for string literals that are frequently changed. This causes performance issues as several string objects are created in memory that are consecutively concatenated. This can cause problems when processing large payloads, <...>.

Instead, use the corresponding StringBuilder and StringBuffer classes, which help to avoid the creation of multiple intermediate string objects, <...>.

The usage of classes that offer mutability (such as StringBuilder and StringBuffer) instead of immutable String objects for string literals that are subject to frequent manipulations/changes makes great sense. Though while reading this recommendation, it may not be immediately obvious what use cases are for StringBuilder compared with StringBuffer, and these two may be considered to be interchangeable.

It may be worth highlighting the difference between StringBuilder and StringBuffer. While both are used to create mutable objects that can be further stringified, StringBuffer's public methods are synchronized, leading to thread safety of StringBuffer objects in a multi-threaded environment, whereas StringBuilder is not thread-safe. On the other hand, thread safety comes at the cost of performance overhead. As a result, it shall be evaluated and assessed if thread safety / synchronization is truly required - if so, StringBuffer shall be considered, and if thread safety is not a concern, performance can be further optimized by using StringBuilder instead.

While SAP Cloud Integration runtime is a multi-threaded environment, I can only come up with a handful of relevant use cases where synchronization is required for string representations that are manipulated in Groovy scripts, which makes me think that StringBuilder shall have a broader range of use cases than StringBuffer in scripts developed in SAP Cloud Integration.

Feedback Type (Optional)

clarity

Page Title on SAP Help Portal (prefilled)

General Scripting Guidelines

Page URL on SAP Help Portal (prefilled)

https://help.sap.com/docs/cloud-integration/sap-cloud-integration/general-scripting-guidelines

[MelanieCueppers]

Thank you for your feedback! We’ll look into it and come back to you if we have any questions.

[AnnikaGonnermann]

Dear @vadimklimov - thanks so much for your valueable feedback. We've made adjustments which will hopefully cover your use case. Please wait for the next publications of the documentation! Best Annika

[sap-doc-bot]

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[vadimklimov]

https://people.sap.com/vadim.klimov

[vadimklimov]

@AnnikaGonnermann, thank you for your time and efforts when assessing and evaluating this proposal, and for accepting it.

And a special thanks to you and the entire team for your openness and collaboration with the community on this initiative - this is very much appreciated.