G-7130 – Always use parameters or pull in definitions rather than referencing external variables in a local program unit.

Local procedures and functions offer an excellent way to avoid code redundancy and make your code more readable (and thus more maintainable). Your local program refers, however, an external data structure, i.e., a variable that is declared outside of the local program. Thus, it is acting as a global variable inside the program. This external dependency is hidden, and may cause problems in the future. You should instead add a parameter to the parameter list of this program and pass the value through the list. This technique makes your program more reusable and avoids scoping problems, i.e. the program unit is less tied to particular variables in the program. In addition, unit encapsulation makes maintenance a lot easier and cheaper.

Tags: Stored Object.

Quality area: Reliability. Severity: Major. Fixing time: Local-high.