Learning this rocked my world. It’s been a frustration when importing or synchronizing records between my legacy system and NetSuite. If I submit a request to create or update a record in NetSuite and all the references to related records are not present, I get a missing RecordRef error and the entire operation fails. In order to beat this, I preceded my insert/update operations with queries to ascertain the state of each reference. From a performance perspective, this was expensive.

So here’s how to improve the performance of your insert/update transactions by skipping all the reference checks.

1. Create a new List<Entity or Transaction Type>.
         List<CustomRecord> custRecList = new List<CustomRecord>();
2. Create a new [Entity or Transaction type] object.
         CustomRecord custRec = new CustomRecord(
   recType = new RecordRef() {
   internalid = “9999” // Key to my custom record type
   }
   , externalId = “xxxxxxxx” // An actual record Key
   , customFieldList = CustomFieldRef[] {}
   );
3. Add fields that you know will NOT blow up on missing RecordRefs.
   • ExternalId
   • Name
   • And create a customFieldList array and populate the “safe” fields.
4. Add custRec to CustRecList.
         custRecList.Add(custRec)
5. NOW… HERE IS THE SECRET SAUCE… DON’T MISS IT.
   Recreate custRec with a record key (externalId) that references the record you just pushed onto the list in step 4. Then add one field that you suspect might have a missing RecordRef. And push that new object onto the list.
              CustomRecord custRec = new CustomRecord(
   recType = new RecordRef() {
   internalid = “9999”
   }
   , externalId = “xxxxxxxx”
                        //, body field that might fail because of a missing RecordRef
   , customFieldList = CustomFieldRef[] {
                    // custom field that might fail because of a missing RecordRef
   }
   );
7. And finally, submit the entire list as your insert/update/upsert.
   netSuiteService.upsertList(custRecList)
8. As you check the results, you’ll find that the initial insert/update request succeeds. Subsequent requests, where you have a missing RecordRef will fail. But that’s OK. It’s expected!

I hope this is as great a revelation to you as it was to me. Happy coding!