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A Global Value is going to much slower than using a static global variable. A Global Value is a stored in your application permanently, so it must be conveyed to the application server (possibly through a network), and will be stored in the application file (.db and .dat). Additionally, because it is a keyed value, the system will have to look through the list of Global Value keys to find the matching key, which will also take time that a static global variable does need to do.

Unless the value needs to be stored with the application permanently, or needs to be communicated between forms, or between clients, you would be better served by a static global variable. A static global variable will only retaiin its value while the form is still active. Its scope is limited to the code attached to the same form, so it can't be used for inter-form communication. And it is limited to the client that ran its declaration. But because it is otherwise a normal variable, it is stored in RAM on the client, and needs no lookup of any kind. This makes it many times faster than either an element or a Global Value, probably several thousand times faster.

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That sounds like a wise course to take.

I ran some timing tests to see how the different means of storing information in SBasic differ in performance. All of the tests were run using Sesame 2.0 (the releative times should be about the same in Sesame 1.x.x) in Standalone mode, using a Mass Update in Customers.db. Each test is a one string write operation followed by one string read operation, and is counted as number of tests performed per second (so higher numbers are better):

Local Variable: 96,964
Static Global Variable: 61,361
Element: 28,876
GlobalValue: 751

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That is because the test program writes and reads to the element, but it does not advance the element, and avoids having to talk to the server at all. Even if it did, though, it would still be faster than a global value because it does not need to do a lookup. In my test case, I put in fifty other global values to cause a reasonable lookup.